Driving home for vacation, George began to feel feverish and uncomfortable. When he remembered that several people in the college dorm had recently come down with German measles, he resolved not to let illness upset his plans to take Liz to a movie that evening. She would be heading out West in a few days.

George was a Christian Scientist, and he began to pray. Over and over he affirmed that God was the only Mind and power and that disease, therefore, had no intelligence or ability to harm him.

But by the time he pulled into the driveway of his home and greeted his mother, George was feeling worse. At first he thought he would go ahead and see Liz anyway. After all, he asked himself, wouldn't calling off his plans be giving the very power to disease he had been denying all afternoon? Something inside, though, told him that wasn't quite right, that exposing someone else to his still unchecked belief in contagion would be contrary to the Golden Rule, contrary as well to the affection he felt for this girl.

He thought of calling a Christian Science practitioner. Maybe she could heal him in time to ask Liz out, but the felt ashamed, however, at such a baldfaced perversion of priorities and decided, after much internal arguing, to postpone his plans and hammer out this problem on his own.

Leaving all his belongings in the car, George trudged upstairs to the study, took down a volume of Mrs. Eddy's writings from the bookshelf, and dug in. Half an hour later his eyes blurred shut, and his forehead met the page. It was nearly midnight when he woke up, and he went to bed with his clothes still on.

Next morning he gathered his resolve once more, cloistered himself in his room with the Bible, Mrs. Eddy's writings, and numerous reference books, and renewed the attack. All that day, like some Civil War general frantically galloping about and urging his men into formation, George marshaled every spiritual truth he could think of to dispute the increasingly severe symptoms of measles. By nightfall there was still no sign of improvement, nor was there next morning when he dragged himself to his desk and thrust open his books with something bordering on resentment.

"I can't do it," he said aloud a few minutes later and slammed the books shut. "I just can't face these words again." He headed for his closet to change out of his pajamas and go for a walk in the yard. "Where have I gone wrong?" George asked himself exasperatedly. "I've done absolutely everything I know how."

Then, as he pulled open a drawer and reached for some socks, a verse from the Bible occurred to him—so calmly, so devoid of the resentment he was feeling, that it pulled him up short. They were Christ Jesus' words: "I can of mine own self do nothing." ^{John 5:30.} George felt as though a window had been thrown open in a stuffy room.

"Of course," he realized, "all this time that I've been declaring God's allness and perfection, I've been believing I had to battle it out and make God's allness true." No sooner had the first Bible verse broken through than a second bubbled to the surface. Again, it was something Christ Jesus had said: "I and my Father are one." ^{10:30 .} George felt like a hitchhiker who, after hours of standing in the rain, gets offered a ride all the way to his doorstep.

It suddenly became quite clear to him that the real "I" of his being—not the human "I" who could "do nothing"—had never been sick and did not therefore have to struggle to get better. Nothing could disturb his actual being because it was derived from his eternal oneness with the Father. This whole scene of sickness could only seem to take over where there was a belief of separation. But at that moment George knew beyond a doubt that any belief of separation from God was a transparent lie, that because he was the Father's beloved son, he could only be well and free.

The stalemate was broken. George wasn't going for a walk now; he went out for a run, a dance of rejoicing. By afternoon the symptoms had vanished; and there was still time to see Liz.