Testimony of Healing April 2, 1977 Issue

I can never be thankful enough for having been reared in...

Jane K. Dowling with contributions from Marion G. Price

I can never be thankful enough for having been reared in Christian Science. I attended Sunday School as a young child.

I would like to share a healing of a very distressing skin condition that erupted on my face and body. I began to pray as taught in Christian Science, working with thoughts of purity and humility to know only the perfect man of God's creating. Finally I felt the need to engage a Christian Science practitioner. One night when the condition seemed aggravated, in fear I called the practitioner. Prayerful work was again taken up, and soon I was able to rest quietly and fell asleep. The next day the practitioner told me to look up in Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy the following statement (p. 280): "Rightly understood, instead of possessing a sentient material form, man has a sensationless body; and God, the Soul of man and of all existence, being perpetual in His own individuality, harmony, and immortality, imparts and perpetuates these qualities in man,—through Mind, not matter." This was so clear to me that all sense of physical body and sensation vanished from my thought and I felt free and grateful. The condition continued to clear up.

Sometime later the symptoms came again. In great distress again I called a practitioner. Prayerful work was done to sustain me. Then came the moment I knew I must take a firmer stand to completely clear my consciousness of what seemed to be standing in the way. Christ Jesus tells us (Luke 17:21), "Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you." "Within you"—within what? Within my own consciousness. Mrs. Eddy tells us (Science and Health, p. 254): "... the human self must be evangelized. This task God demands us to accept lovingly to-day, and to abandon so fast as practical the material, and to work out the spiritual which determines the outward and actual."