Testimony of Healing August 29, 1953 Issue

Because personal contagion, or...

Vera Cross

Because personal contagion, or personality worship, is as rampant as any disease and because its victim suffers sometimes more than the victim of a contagious disease, I submit this testimony. It is my sincere hope that if any of its readers are under the influence of a strong personal attraction, adoration, or adulation, they will be helped as I have been and will find freedom from this form of bondage.

From childhood I was given to hero worship and infatuation, and I carried this tendency with me into maturity. Because of this untamed emotion I suffered much until I was forced to see its illusory nature by overcoming a strong personal attachment that had held me in its grip. There were weeks of struggle, and through the help of a devoted Christian Science practitioner error after error in my thinking was brought to the surface to be destroyed. I would walk the floor, declaring my at-one-ment with God and my freedom from all that was unlike Him, and frequently would kneel in humble prayer, using the words of the Psalmist (Ps. 139:23, 24), "Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting." Throughout those weeks of struggle I was blessed by the article "The New Birth" (Miscellaneous Writings by Mrs. Eddy, pp. 15–20).

Then one morning I read with new light and interest a familiar passage in the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," where, after referring to the need for spiritual affections and aims, Mrs. Eddy says (p. 265), "This scientific sense of being, forsaking matter for Spirit, by no means suggests man's absorption into Deity and the loss of his identity, but confers upon man enlarged individuality, a wider sphere of thought and action, a more expansive love, a higher and more permanent peace." These words became a part of my consciousness, and my whole experience was to be blessed by them.

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