I am one of those fortunate persons...

Milton W. Adler

I am one of those fortunate persons who have had the blessed teachings of Christian Science from childhood. This Science has been my only physician, and I have had many physical healings. One of them I shall never forget. This healing took place while I was serving with the United States Army in Italy during World War II.

While taking part in a major offensive I suffered what the Army doctors called a critical brain wound, from which I was not expected to recover. I was operated on for the removal of the shrapnel within several hours after being wounded, but I had no medication from that time on.

The first day in the hospital I was able to get a short note off to a Christian Science chaplain, whom I had met several months before in a rest camp. His letter in reply was just the awakening that I needed from the feeling that I had been forsaken and unprotected. He said that I should remember, despite the physical evidence to the contrary, that nothing had happened to God and therefore nothing had happened to me. I stopped thinking of myself as a wounded, lonely mortal and started to claim my sonship with God as a perfect idea of the one perfect Mind.

A consecrated Christian Science practitioner in the United States then took up the work, and my recovery was quite rapid. In about two weeks I was able to get out of bed and walk around. Two months later I was sent back to my own unit after a surgeon had pronounced me perfectly fit. My recovery was due to effective prayer as taught in Christian Science.

When I returned to my unit I learned of the protection that I received at the time the incident had occurred. Although we had been under heavy enemy artillery fire, it had lifted long enough to permit evacuation of all the wounded and, in fact, of our entire unit. No one was able to explain exactly why the enemy had stopped firing. I had felt particularly unprotected because I had been standing on my feet when I was hit, not having heard the shell coming until it landed right in front of me. Because I did not entirely lose consciousness during the experience, I was able to repeat "the scientific statement of being," given us by Mrs. Eddy in Science and Health (p. 468), over and over again. Even repeated as it was in panic and fear, it brought me a sense of the presence of Truth.

While I was being transported to the evacuation hospital my pocket-sized Science and Health was lost from my jacket pocket, and it appeared that I would have nothing with which to study at a time when I had a great need to do so. However, the following morning our battalion chaplain brought to the hospital some personal belongings of mine, including my copy of Mrs. Eddy's Prose Works; so I was provided with something to study during my stay in the hospital.

I was asked many times while in the hospital if I had had my helmet on when I was hit, but I was never able to give a positive answer because I did not remember. When I returned to my unit I was informed that the shrapnel had pierced my helmet, helmet liner, and sweat-band. A smaller piece that hit my ankle had gone through my shovel first. So I was very grateful for the protection that I had in this way received.

For the Christian Science chaplain who perceived and helped to meet my need, for the work of the practitioner, who was unimpressed by the gloomy reports about me from the War Department, for my training in the Christian Science Sunday School, and for membership in The Mother Church and a branch church, I am very thankful. I am profoundly grateful to God for Christian Science.—Milton W. Adler, Highland Park, Michigan.

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Testimony of Healing

With deep humility and sincere...

February 14, 1953

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