An Australian voice

Ah! Ellis Gulliver. The Master cake maker who was allergic to flour! Don't worry. The severe dermatitis was healed through Christian Science. Three days of study and persistent prayer. He says: ''After three days of my persistent prayer in this fashion, 'the Word was made flesh' – rendered practical. My raw skin had been renewed” (p. 208, Living Christian Science - Fourteen Lives, by Marcy Babbitt). This in his very early days of consulting with Science and Health.

And he gives us a description of how he prayed: “I disposed of the tarlike* substance in the snow and gained a clear, spiritual concept that I had to deny the reality of this condition and plead, or understand, God's allness. This mental discipline was undertaken with a zest that excluded everything else from consciousness. I realized with all my heart that such consecration was vitally necessary. Every time the itch, the pain, the discomfort presented itself, I denied its spiritual reality and pleaded God's allness. This was my first thought before going to sleep at night, and my first on waking in the morning. It was an earnest longing and thirsting after righteousness, or a right understanding of God.

 ibid)

* Medically prescribed

Ellis is careful to describe how he worked spiritually on all the problems which came his way in business and in his cattle raising activities.

When considering the leavening effect of yeast, how a small amount caused chemical changes to take place when thinking of the possibility of his going into sheep and cattle raising, he found that, “To me this presented a practical illustration of the way a progressive idea could become an expanding influence in my life.” He found a property 300 miles north-west of Sydney. Prayer was needed every step of the way -- needed and utilised.

On page 213 one can read about how he coped with a flood which seemed about to drown 1,500 sheep; on page 215, how he increased by five times the carrying capacity of the land with sheep; page 217, dealing with a very bad drought.

Ellis was an excellent metaphysician – page 216 gives an example of his reasoning.

Joyce Voysey