Testimonies of Healing

In the summer of 1904 I was healed of paralysis. When first stricken, a physician was called who pronounced the case fatal.

Like most people, I came into Christian Science through the door of suffering. I had been troubled with lumbago and sciatica for several years, but at this time I was very ill, being in bed a great deal and all the time in pain and suffering.

I HAD the misfortune to inherit what is called a delicate constitution, with consumptive tendencies. My early life was greatly marred by tedious attacks of sickness, and when about eighteen years years old I had the measles, which resulted in a long spell of sickness.

A year's course of study, involving both physical and mental strain, acting on a constitution never considered robust, and weakened by two years' residence in the enervating climate of Aden, reduced me to a state of nervous prostration and one hundred and twenty pounds in weight. I completed the year's course and passed the final examination, though living in constant dread of breakdown at any time during the last three months.

I received the first glimpse of Christian Science about four and a half years ago, through a friend who gave me a copy of the Sentinel to read. Although I read it from beginning to end and enjoyed the reading, it did not seem to make very much impression on me.

Is it necessary to believe in Christian Science, in order to receive help from it? Let me briefly relate my experience and the query will thus be answered. About the year 1890 I had an attack of that then comparatively new disease, the grip, which resulted in the beginning of a physical decline from a previous condition of unusually vigorous health.

I had suffered for eight years from a complication of uterine and other troubles. I was in constant pain; could not lie down without great discomfort, and as I was unable to use opiates, many times I sat up until almost morning and then from exhaustion fell asleep.

Ten years ago I greeted the awakening of nature to new life with a never-before-experienced feeling, for in my own consciousness a new life had appeared,—a life so full of joy and gratitude that my heart might well vie with the birds of spring in songs of praise to God, who had so recently been revealed to me. That which to my childhood's questioning had been presented as God, had grown more and more repellant, in proportion as I realized the heartrending discord which penetrated every state and condition of this sense-world, from man down to the tiniest animal, and even in the so-called forces of nature, until at an early age, in the bitterness of my heart, I deliberately rejected and defied Him, choosing rather to stand as "having no hope, and without God in the world.

I have been a student of Christian Science for about four years, and those four years of study have given me an understanding of God, and my relation to Him and to my fellow-man, which has wrought nothing less than a complete regeneration in me, of which all the preceding years had never given me so much as an inkling. Physically the understanding of Science has healed me of life-long chronic catarrh, of a very distressing form of acute dyspepsia, of which I had been a victim for many years, finding no relief from severe attacks except in the use of morphine; of a functional derangement which caused much suffering at times, and which the surgeon's knife and years of medical treatment had alike proved ineffectual in correcting; of chronic and constitutional throat trouble, and tendency to severe and protracted colds; and (what is to me perhaps the greatest bodily relief of all) of the chronic lassitude or weakness which made my existence and its duties a burden.

THE following is a summary of my physical, mental, and religious condition in December, 1898: Rheumatism in my left arm, so that it had not been raised to a level with the shoulder without pain for over twelve years; sciatica, more or less active for nineteen years; thigh and knee joints so stiff that I could not cross my legs, and had not been able to do so for several years; dyspepsia, violent at times, so that I had been compelled to exercise the greatest dietetic care for twelve years; and constipation, obstinate and intractable. I also had catarrhal inflammation of the bladder, of several years' duration, and chronic inflammation of the throat for nearly thirty years, with almost constant coughing.