Article May 21, 1955 Issue

"STRETCH FORTH THINE HAND"

JERRY HUDSON DE LEÓN

In the twelfth chapter of Matthew we read that when Jesus went into the synagogue, "behold, there was a man which had his hand withered." The account continues: "Then saith he to the man, Stretch forth thine hand. And he stretched it forth; and it was restored whole, like as the other."

Jesus was quick to discern and to point out the action that was needed in every case to free a deluded victim of material sense. Many times his healings were preceded by a sharp command which woke the dreamer—bemused by a false sense of matter's power—into action expressing the force and vigor of Spirit. At once, in the light of this spiritual discernment, the troubled one was released into active life and health. The seeming ability of matter to bind or to hamper was destroyed.

Matter or the body has no power to impede or to obstruct right action. Mary Baker Eddy discovered this when an accident, a fall upon the ice, threatened to rob her of life. She turned to the account of Jesus' healing of the palsied man (Matt. 9:2-7), and in a moment of great illumination she glimpsed wherein lay Jesus' mastery of the body and his authority over it. She was instantly healed, and she lived to unfold and elucidate this great truth to others. From her own experience she writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 393): "Take possession of your body, and govern its feeling and action. Rise in the strength of Spirit to resist all that is unlike good."

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