Standing in front of a petrol...

Hayem H. Lurie

Standing in front of a petrol station near Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia, and chatting with the garage proprietor while my car was being filled with petrol, I experienced a sharp pain in one of my fingers. When I looked to see what had happened I noticed a mosquito leaving my finger, which was bleeding. By night my finger was swollen. I did a little work in Christian Science and retired early. At midnight I woke up suffering from fever, and the swelling had extended to my hand. I was restless and could not stay in bed. I started working now earnestly, applying all I knew of the truth to overcome the belief of poison, but instead of getting better I grew worse. I became alarmed, thinking my treatment unsuccessful and doubting my ability to help myself.

I started to pray to God to give me guidance, new ideas, and a better understanding of how to use them, and to enable me to come out of this trouble as I had been helped many times before. Of myself, I realized, I could not do anything more.

"The animate should be governed by God alone." This sentence on page 409 of our textbook. Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy, came to my relief. I had noticed that short sentence for the first time only a fortnight before, and it now came again to my disturbed mind. I felt a sense of peace descending on me, and clarity of thinking returned.

If "the animate" is "governed by God alone," and God is Love, then the argument of mortal mind that it can make a poison-carrying mosquito the poison of which men fear is not true and cannot affect God's son.

I realized it was my own fear, based on the suggestions of mortal mind, that had brought on first the pain and then the fever and swelling. By this time, all thought of a poisonous mosquito had vanished altogether. No more was there this false concept between me and my creator! I was coming nearer to God. divine Love, infinite Mind. There was not a trace of fear any more. The heat left my body like a vapor; the swelling started to recede; I fell asleep. The next day I was able to do my work as intended; the day afterward my health was normal.

This experience set me thinking. I could see clearly that God does not create enemies to man, His own image and likeness, and that they exist nowhere in God's universe to poison and destroy. They are mortal mind's false beliefs or phenomena, accepted by mankind as true. This experience was a proof to me of the correctness of many statements made by our Leader in Science and Health about the powerlessness of the so-called laws of mortal mind which are accepted as infallible by a material world.

Later on I understood better what our Leader means on page 282 of our textbook when she compares real Life or Mind with a sphere or circle, without a beginning or an end, and a little farther on says, "The sphere represents good, the self-existent and eternal individuality or Mind." A sphere includes no symbol of oppositeness, in space or activity. Thus man and nature reflect an undivided oneness and perfection, and in spiritual reality man has no enemies.

The reliability of Christian Science as a source of guidance and inspiration was again proved to me in this experience by the fact that only two weeks before the incident I had been studying the sentence in Science and Health which later brought about my healing. Thus is the Bible's promise fulfilled (Isa. 65:23,24): "They shall not labour in vain, nor bring forth for trouble; for they are the seed of the blessed of the Lord, and their offspring with them. And it shall come to pass, that before they call, I will answer; and while the are yet speaking, I will hear."

My gratitude to God and to our beloved Leader and Christian Science not only for the healing mentioned and many others, but for the sustaining power and protection I have experienced for the twenty-five years since I became interested in Science, is more than I can express in words. It can only be repaid by more usefulness to the movement our Leader established for the benefit of all mankind.—Hayem H. Lurie, Johannesburg, Transvaal, South Africa.

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Christian Science was introduced...

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