Needed spiritual awakening comes with protracted healing

Beatrix Buel Smith

Sometimes a slow healing brings needed spiritual awakening and development. Each healing is a milestone along life's path whereby we ascend nearer to God in consciousness. I want to testify to the healing of a condition which had persisted for over thirty years.

When Christian Science came to my notice, I had no need of it except as a religion to fill an abysmal void where faith in God had once been. The logical explanation of Soul given in this Science at once appealed to my reason, and I embraced the religion with joy.

At this time I had a small cyst at the back of my head. As it caused no inconvenience, I never thought about it. After being in Science for a number of years, I felt that I should be striving for perfection and that I should demonstrate the nothingness of the cyst. Accordingly, I went to a practitioner and had many treatments, but received no healing. I became discouraged at that point and stopped treatment; but looking back on that experience, I realize that much in my thought needed to be corrected, especially two things: I expected the practitioner to do all the work for me, and I wanted to heal matter.

Finally, as the result of a fall, the cyst grew larger, became painful. and began to discharge. When I went to the hairdresser, I was subject to all sorts of comments and advice. I realized then that my only course was to prove that Christian Science heals and to co-operate by doing my own work in addition to the help of a practitioner.

Then the spiritual intuition came to me that God has no consciousness of error, since He has made all good. Therefore man, His image and likeness, can likewise have no consciousness of anything unlike good. This disposed of a claim of imperfection. The manifestation began to diminish. In a short while it vanished completely, and the hair started to grow back on the bald spot. When asked by the hairdresser what I had done, how grateful I was to be able to state that my prayer to God in Christian Science had accomplished the healing.

Mary Baker Eddy says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 254), "Individuals are consistent who, watching and praying, can 'run, and not be weary; . . . walk, and not faint," who gain good rapidly and hold their position, or attain slowly and yield not to discouragement." And she adds farther on, "When we wait patiently on God and seek Truth righteously, He directs our path.

I also had a healing of a felon on my little finger, which made wearing a glove painful. I suffered from this for a year. My endeavor one night to help a friend by reading Science and Health for several hours so filled my own consciousness with a sense of man's spiritual perfection that three days later I realized that the felon had disappeared. At another time a trying condition of corns was removed through clearing out of my thoughts a very critical attitude toward a friend.

I have had many other healings, including those of severe sprains and colds, which have been overcome without their interfering with my duties. False traits of character, such as jealousy and an inferiority complex, have been destroyed. My daughter has been brought up in Christian Science from birth, and there has been no comfort equal to the scientific realization that God is her Father-Mother, always caring for His offspring. She too has had many healings.

I am grateful to our Leader, Mrs. Eddy, for her unselfish labors in bringing Christian Science to the world. I also am grateful for class instruction and for the activities which church membership provides, thus helping us to grow in grace as we serve our great movement.— (Mrs.) Beatrix Buel Smith, New York, New York.

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Testimony of Healing

Seeds sown in Sunday School bear fruit years later

February 5, 1949

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