Testimonies of Healing

I am , as yet, what the true Christian Scientist terms "an outsider," though my application for membership in the Church of Christ, Scientist, is now in the hands of the committee, but I happen to know that members always delight when testimonies come in from so-called "outsiders," and I feel so very closely allied to the thought that I wish to testify to the good Christian Science has done in our household, and if not encroaching too much upon space, would like to be heard through the columns of the Journal and add briefly to the testimony of my wife. The healing of our daughter was certainly most wonderful.

The sense of love and joy that came to me as I caught the first ray of light through Christian Science will never be forgotten. It came while I was reading Science and Health.

Three years ago, and for several years before that time, I was on the verge of nervous prostration; but I had little children and no one but my husband to help me with them, and he having to attend to his business, I was obliged to keep up. In September, 1901, I began to think of Christian Science, and in October of the same year I bought Science and Health, read it through, but could understand very little of it.

Six years ago, through the influence of a friend who had been greatly benefited by Christian Science, I was led to seek its help, after being eight years a physical wreck. During these years of physical torture, I had the services of the very best medical skill in this city, in addition to the use of innumerable patent medicines, electricity, exercises of various kinds, and a sojourn at a famous health resort.

For twenty-five years I was a member of an orthodox church, loving it and seeking to be active in its good works During a part of this time I was a sufferer from physical ills but it never occurred to me that I should look to my church for relief. I was under the care of skilful physicians and used medicines in great quantity.

I was lame from birth. The condition was supposed to be prenatal, — a sort of birthmark, which gradually increased all my life, as nothing in a medical line could ever help me in the least.

Four years' study of Christian Science, and what a wonderful four years! As I look back, a feeling of awe and gratitude moves me. What a change! Four years of trying to know God—good—as He is, as against the far greater number spent in trying to know Him as He is generally conceived to be.

For a longtime I have felt it a duty to let the world know some of the good I have received through Christian Science. Ten years ago I was, to sense, a very sick man.

In this age of spiritual aspiration it is not surprising to find that many Christian Scientists, in their search after good, have passed through a variety of phases of human thought before they learned of the divine Principle through whom they are demonstrating life's problems to-day. I do not remember the time when I failed to be interested, in a vague sort of way, in the deep things of life.

It is with a deep sense of gratitude to our wise, patient, and loving Leader in Christian Science, that I offer this testimony of my healing. There seems to be a common impression among people who know little or nothing about Christian Science, that it may perhaps be of some benefit in cases of nervous or mental diseases, but cannot possibly restore broken or wasted tissue.