“The healing of the recent loss of vision in one eye has been complete.”

1. In all honesty, do you feel differently about Christian Science healing and your own practice of Christian Science after completing the reading?

I have read all of the testimonies three or four times. Do I feel differently about Christian Science healing following the reading? Yes, I wonder how anyone could not!

Statements like the following typify the spirit of the collection to me. A woman who had been blind for several years was learning about Christian Science from a practitioner. She wrote about what happened one day during that learning period when she was earnestly putting into practice what she had learned:

“Error seemed to say in a mocking tone, ‘You are blind; you can’t even see your hand in front of your face.’ Then I would silently affirm and thank God that because eyes are spiritual discernment, I could see.

“This warfare went on for several minutes. But even as the voice of the so-called physical senses seemed louder and stronger, there was more love, more assurance, and a deeper realization of the allness of Truth and Truth’s manifestation in my consciousness and in my affirmations. Then as if a veil were lifted, my sight was restored.”

This testimony and the others give such a clear sense that physical problems are error, just as Mrs. Eddy says they are, and as such when confronted with Truth they go into their native nothingness. But the testimonies also show that confronting problems with Truth is more than just a mental exercise. It is giving oneself wholly to God, wholeheartedly putting all in the care of infinite Love, and truly being willing to be made new.

2. Please share healing experiences that you feel have come about as a direct result of this new view of the serious practicality of Christian Science practice.

Four or five days before the testimony collection arrived, I woke up one morning without vision in one eye. The eye had been slightly painful during the previous day; I’d had temporary eye problems before, but never a situation where I could see only a dark, vague blur out of one eye.

I was fearful and alarmed, but I went to my desk and got quiet. I thought of truths that had been helpful before: If God is all-seeing, then God’s man is all-seeing by reflection. If God is all-seeing, then everything is seen; nothing can be hidden. I remembered that Mrs. Eddy had told a student that “the eye cannot help them or hinder them from seeing.” (Included in the Christian Healer book). Something else that helped me was a quiet conviction that when things look dark, good is not gone. Good is God, and God can never be absent.

I didn’t talk about the eye problem, but stayed very close to God that day and the next. I declared that we see as God sees, not in some poor way of our own. I realized this also meant that I could only see others as He sees them. I gradually began to see out of that eye again, but still could not read print with it. I stayed with the conviction that good had not gone somewhere else, but was here. Then, just as I was beginning to be able to read with both eyes again, the testimony collection arrived.

To my great joy, some of the early healings in the collection were about hearing and seeing. I loved these healings and was tremendously inspired by them. They lifted the burden from me and reminded me that no matter what had seemed wrong with matter, it did not prevent healing. Each testimony conveyed a sense of release, both for the testifier and for myself. I continued to read the whole booklet, little by little, drinking in the testimonies like someone in a desert who had found a fountain of pure, cold water. When I finished I would start again at the beginning.

The healing of the recent loss of vision in one eye has been complete. Since reading this testimony collection I am more encouraged about all healing than I think I have ever been. I love this man’s statement on page 71: “Now, my brother, this demonstration showed me my own nothingness and the all-power and goodness of God. In all my life I never felt my own littleness as I have in this, and the goodness and glory of our God is beyond words of mine to express.”