Our beloved Leader, Mary Baker Eddy...

Muriel H. Hoiles

Our beloved Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, writes of Christian Science (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 3), "This Science is a law of divine Mind, a persuasive animus, an unerring impetus, an ever-present help." I cannot review the truth of this statement in my own experience without the deepest reverence and gratitude for Mrs. Eddy, the one who discovered the truth of being and brought it within the grasp of even a child.

Christian Science found me sixteen years ago, a young mother burdened with worry, acutely homesick, and mentally depressed over the untimely loss of loved ones. If I had been under medical treatment, my condition might have been diagnosed as a nervous breakdown. Indeed, life held little joy me, for I had yet spiritually discerned true Life.

Then I awakened to the need for a higher outlook, and turning to the Bible for comfort, I searched in wordless longing for enlightenment. One passage began to stand out clearly to me and became an insistent demand. "Come out from among them, and be ye separate" (II Cor. 6:17). This demand proved to be the "persuasive animus" of Love, compelling me to seek and find my freedom. Upon borrowing the textbook of Christian Science, Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy, I found the truth which healed me and brought me into a new sense of Life and a joyful assurance of man's eternal home.

Throughout the years Christian Science has been an ever-present help to our family. With the loving help of a practitioner two instantaneous healings of quinsy were experienced, a collapsed lung and the threat of tuberculosis were quickly overcome, and the children were beautifully protected from so-called contagious diseases.

One healing in particular brought great confidence and spiritual growth. Our young son, when he was about nine years old, was struck in the mouth by a heavy swing. His face was badly cut and bruised, and four of his front teeth were knocked out. Neighbors who had witnessed the accident and who felt partly responsible for it urged that an immediate X ray be taken at their own expense. We thanked them for their kind concern, quieted their fears, and, silently declaring the unity of God and His perfect, indestructible man, replaced the teeth and made the child comfortable in bed. Late into the night my husband and I continued declaring the truth of being, until all anxiety was banished and the boy had fallen asleep.

Early the following morning he ran to us quite radiant with joy explaining that instead of calling us when he awakened in the night with a sense of fear, he had turned his thought to God as he had been taught to do in the Christian Science Sunday School and that a still small voice had told him that all that belonged to his real self was anchored in Love. The teeth were found to be firm, and they never caused trouble in any way. The other evidences of the accident also soon vanished from sight.

I can never fully express my gratitude for this proof of the omnipresence of divine Love, nor for the privilege of church membership and class instruction. My prayer is so to live Christian Science that others may also feel the spiritual animus, which blesses every hour.—(Mrs.)Muriel H. Hoiles, Larchmont, New York.

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Testimony of Healing

For a number of years, during...

September 20, 1952

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