Testimony of Healing February 7, 1970 Issue

I am grateful that from early childhood I had the opportunity to...

Walter Louis Stockman with contributions from Elsie C. Stockman

I am grateful that from early childhood I had the opportunity to attend a Christian Science Sunday School. The many lessons learned there often come to mind when needed. At that time the Sunday School teachers may have despaired at my seeming inattentiveness, but their loving persistence in presenting the truth to me through the use of the Bible and the textbook, Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy, gave me a foundation upon which to build.

I was drafted into military service during World War II. Although I was not working and studying Christian Science diligently, I felt the protecting power of God when situations arose that forcefully brought my attention to the fact of man's relationship to God. While going through the many physical examinations and classification procedures at the time of induction, I was struck by the thought of one of the Ten Commandments (Ex. 20:13): "Thou shalt not kill." This was uppermost in my thinking, and a way opened up for me to serve in a noncombatant assignment. I understood that my primary purpose was to help my fellowmen. Incidents occurred that as I reflect on them today after a deeper study of Christian Science show the truth of the teachings in our textbook.

Although I had been classified as having limited vision, one experience remains with me to disprove this classification. One day while serving in a field first aid station, I was assigned to carry a stretcher to a squad of men dug in at the top of a mountain. The trip upward required crossing an exposed ridge. When I reached this point, a voice in a foreign language called out asking for help. I could not see anything, no matter how hard I looked. I could not even place the position by listening to the voice, for the echoes distorted any sense of direction. I then went upward to the top of the mountain. On the way down I again crossed this exposed ridge, and again the voice called. At this moment a friendly patrol came out of the woods on a ridge across from me, and by hand signals I directed the patrol to a deep and almost inaccessible ravine. Only divine direction enabled me to point toward the exact spot of the call for help.

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Testimony of Healing

In Science and Health, its author, Mrs. Eddy, writes (p. 233),...