I desire to express my gratitude...

Lilly Dickinson

I desire to express my gratitude to God for Mrs. Eddy's wonderful discovery of the healing truth, which she has given to the world.

When reading "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy for the first time and glimpsing the truth that God had never made evil, how I wished I could see Mrs. Eddy and thank her for finding it out!

A few years before, when a girl in my teens. I had refused to believe that God had made evil. I said, "I know God is perfect, and I shall find out the truth about this some day." Many things puzzled me, but when I read Science and Health I was lifted to the mountaintop. However, so much fear had to be overcome in my consciousness that most of my healings were slow. My first healing, of nasal and throat catarrh, was instantaneous. My next healing, that of a skin disease, was slower, owing to my sensitiveness about the condition, but as I pressed forward this was gradually overcome. When I had been studying Science for about six years I was healed of a perforated eardrum, which had been discharging for years. This healing also has been permanent.

About this time I passed through an experience which Mrs. Eddy describes in "Pond and Purpose" in "Miscellaneous Writings." She says (pp. 203, 204): "The baptism of repentance is indeed a stricken state of human consciousness, wherein mortals gain severe views of themselves; a state of mind which rends the veil that hides mental deformity. Tears flood the eyes, agony struggles, pride rebels, and a mortal seems a monster, a dark, impenetrable cloud of error." In my case pride did rebel. For a while I struggled with it, but it resisted all my efforts to overcome it. Then one day I said, "I know this is an unchristianlike quality of thought, which I do not want, and I will trust God to heal it." Shortly afterwards, in the stillness of the night, I became conscious that my healing was about to take place. The "still small voice" of Truth whispered (ibid., p. 179), "What is it that seems a stone between us and the resurrection morning?" Then the answer that our Leader gives us to that question came to my waiting thought: "It is the belief of mind in matter." There and then I was completely healed, and as divine Love flooded my consciousness, pain, from which I had suffered severely, faded away.

My gradual working out of a timid, nervous, and excitable temperament has been wonderful. For mental self-knowledge and the overcoming of faults of disposition, sensitiveness, self-condemnation, self-depreciation, and fear of evil, I am most grateful. To understand God and man's relation to Him is a great privilege. I can indeed say, "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death."

For the blessings which come to us in the way of literature, for membership in The Mother Church and for the privilege of class instruction, I am indeed grateful.— (Miss) Lilly Dickinson, Sherburn-in-Elmet, Yorkshire, England.

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Testimony of Healing

I owe a great debt of gratitude to...

December 18, 1943

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