Testimony of Healing December 16, 2019 Issue

Aggressive symptoms healed

David Maune

I first heard of Christian Science several decades ago when, as an Army officer, I had been assigned to a new post to attend a military war college. While getting acquainted with our new town, my wife wandered into a Christian Science Reading Room, where she learned a tiny bit about Christian Science and purchased two books by Mary Baker Eddy: the Manual of The Mother Church and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. She placed the two books on our bedside table and gave me this somewhat oversimplified explanation: “Today in a Christian Science Reading Room downtown, I bought these two books that we are supposed to read if we feel sick.” At the time, I didn’t give those books a second thought, because I was in excellent health and rarely sick.

Several weeks later, however, I woke up very early one morning sweating profusely, with a sharp pain in my chest and shortness of breath. My father had recently died of a condition the medical profession associates with these symptoms, and I thought I was suffering a similar episode. When the pain and sweating did not go away after several minutes, I opened one of those two books on my bedside table.

I chose the Church Manual because it was smaller. I stuck my finger between the pages and opened at random to page 42, where I saw the words “Alertness to Duty.” It was a church By-Law, and I began to read the first sentence of the paragraph: “It shall be the duty of every member of this Church to defend himself daily against aggressive mental suggestion,...” I did not get any farther in the sentence because I paused to consider what “aggressive mental suggestion” meant. I had not heard that term before, but I thought the writer was on to something.

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