Letter to a Practitioner

[Editor’s Note: this is a letter written by Mrs. Martha Wilcox, C.S.B. of Kansas City, Missouri, to a Christian Scientist who was visiting in Kansas City and who had called upon Mrs. Wilcox for aid in meeting a case.]

My Dear:

I was so sorry to disappoint you last night, but it seemed impossible for me to see you today. If our visit would heal the dear lady—then I would have set aside everything for that. This incident took me back in thought to a time in my early practice when I had what seemed to be a case passing on, and I called on my teacher, and she could not give me the desired help. I was so overwhelmed with fear and grief that I went up into my attic, and the words on page 444:7-12If Christian Scientists ever fail to receive aid from other Scientists, — their brethren upon whom they may call, — God will still guide them into the right use of temporary and eternal means. Step by step will those who trust Him find that “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble., came to me, and I “turned from the lie of false belief to the truth of being” (370:2) as never before—and that dying woman was released—in my thought—as such, and she lived abundantly for thirteen years so that she did not even need another treatment during that time.

Many many times we try to take the kingdom of heaven by violence—“therefore are its spiritual gates not captured” (Ret. 79:28).

Mrs. Eddy showed us that we must come to the place where we did not even desire to heal the sick. If we desire to heal the sick, we first have to believe that there are sick mortals to be healed. We shall heal the sick—the so-called sick—instantly, when we understand man to be God’s presence, and therefore never mortal and never sick. As we gain that understanding—that understanding is the Christ, or the real Self of us, and it could no more recognize sick mortals as entities than light could recognize darkness (if the light were conscious).

My dear Mrs. S. . . . ., it is surely right to “heal the sick, raise the dead, and cast out devils. . . .” but we can only do this as we “cast the beam out of our own eye.” That is, we are to become the consciousness that we have ever been, so entirely, that there is no false sense in us. Jesus consciously (not intellectually) knew when he called Lazarus to “come forth,” that there was nothing to Lazarus that could say, “I’m dead and cannot come.” Jesus knew that the same one conscious Life that lived as him (Jesus) also lived in Lazarus and as Lazarus. There is nothing but conscious Life, Himself, to every individual expression; and that conscious Life lives eternally and uninterruptedly in all things and as all things. “Believest thou this?” No, we do not believe (understand) or we would see and know man as alive forevermore.

Mrs. Eddy nearly always healed instantly. Why? Because she knew that conscious Life and Love are infinite—ALL, and she did not see besides ALL a sick mortal to be made well.

I love you for your conscientious desire to see this Truth and reflect this Love, and

“Never a wish—tho’ buried deep,
But angels o’er it vigil keep.”

I know that as I rise out of material sense—I shall see all men as risen. . . .

Most sincerely,
Martha Wilcox