Testimony of Healing July 13, 1940 Issue

In August, 1915, while in the trenches in France, I...

William Wadsworth Porter

In August, 1915, while in the trenches in France, I received a gift copy of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, and began the study of it with great joy. A short time after this I was admitted to hospital, suffering from a so-called incurable disease of the kidneys, said to be due to exposure in the war. On arriving in England I asked for treatment from a Christian Science practitioner, and at once began to improve. Although my mother had been told that I had but a short time to live, my recovery was so complete that in the latter part of 1916 I was passed fit for active service again by a medical board. I should like to state here that a definite stage in my recovery was reached when I realized that God, Spirit, was my Life, and that I need not fear my body or what it seemed to manifest. From that time the symptoms abated rapidly.

After my healing I entered the Air Force, and when my training as an observer was completed I again went to France. Here I experienced much wonderful protection, an instance of which I should like to relate. I was sent out on a bombing raid to blow up a certain strategic point, and on the way there I began to fill my thought with the promises in the Bible and the textbook, which were in my pocket, and to realize in some measure the presence of God. The job was done and we were on our way back, when five enemy planes descended on us. My gun was put out of action almost at once, and in a short time it was virtually impossible to put a hand on the aeroplane where there was no bullet hole. Certain vital wires had been cut through, leaving only one strand intact. It was indeed "man's extremity." I stood up to protect the pilot, without whose work we could not get home. The words from a section of the Lesson-Sermon in the Christian Science Quarterly for that week came clearly to my thought (Science and Health, p. 571): "Clad in the panoply of Love, human hatred cannot reach you." At once a most uplifting sense came to me. The presence of God seemed everywhere in spite of the fact that bullets were flying all around us. I thought, "If my body is riddled with bullets and we crash, my real selfhood cannot be touched." A great joy and peace filled my being, and I found no malice in my thought towards the enemy. Then, without more ado, the attackers turned and left us, as if they had lost sight of us. Though in a perilous state, with smoke coming from the machine, we reached home and leaped out, whereupon the plane burst into flames. Neither of us had been hit, and the pilot remarked that, strange to say, he had not experienced any fear whatsoever, and that the whole affair was a miracle. He knew nothing of Christian Science, but had been protected also.

Many times I found myself in great danger, but came through unharmed. On one occasion a shell burst so near that some companions and I were buried, but I was dug out unharmed, and never during the whole campaign received a wound of any sort. I was still in France when the Armistice was declared. I had learned how to make practical the promise in the ninety-first Psalm, "He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty."

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