Article November 5, 1938 Issue

Instantaneous Healing

WILLIAM SAFFELLE RAWLINGS

Through the healing ministrations of spiritual truth, many students of Christian Science are early blessed by what are known as instantaneous healings. And from the lips of such students ascend paeans of praise to the creator of the universe for this evidence of His divine goodness. Well may they blend their voices in these triumphant words: "I have found the way."

Sometimes, however, the student has labored long and conscientiously and is still confronted with the material evidence of a problem unsolved. The arguments of error—fear, discouragement, impatience, self-pity, and futility—press in, and the student is tempted to believe that Christian Science is not working for him in this instance. Such a one may gain fresh courage and inspiration from these words of Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 127): "When a hungry heart petitions the divine Father-Mother God for bread, it is not given a stone,—but more grace, obedience, and love. If this heart, humble and trustful, faithfully asks divine Love to feed it with the bread of heaven, health, holiness, it will be conformed to a fitness to receive the answer to its desire; then will flow into it the 'river of His pleasure,' the tributary of divine Love, and great growth in Christian Science will follow."

"A fitness to receive"! What an explanatory statement! If a student's understanding is insufficient to meet the situation which confronts him at the time, he knows that he can, through consecrated effort, grow into such understanding as will enable him to triumph over every lying suggestion of mortal mind, for nothing is impossible with God, and everything good is possible in Christian Science. How encouraging it is to know that right effort is not wasted, but is an integral part of the conforming process whereby one attains "a fitness to receive." And what of the time required for this conforming process? Mrs. Eddy's thought on "time" in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" is significant. She writes (p. 584), "The objects of time and sense disappear in the illumination of spiritual understanding, and Mind measures time according to the good that is unfolded."

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