Testimonies of Healing

Dear Friends: —It is with great pleasure and deep gratitude that I tell you what Christian Science has done for me and my family. I had been sick for eighteen years and each year found me growing weaker and more helpless.

In the month of February, 1887, a neighbor came into my house with a letter from a mutual friend living in Chicago, who wrote that they had something new in Chicago called Christian Science, and it pertained to healing the sick; that a friend of hers, a Christian Scientist, was stopping in C. for a few days, and if we would call on her (giving the address) she would gladly tell us something about it.

Christian Science first came to my notice in the year 1886, but I gave it no thought only as something most unreasonable and false until it came to me to save my life and gave me something to live for. On November 20, 1886, a baby boy was born to us.

When the star of hope which Christian Science has restored to a burdened world, began to shed its beneficent rays over my darkened sense the incurable stage had been reached. Discouragement had assumed hopeless proportions.

In the year 1900, in a township in a county of the State of Illinois, the mother of a German family passed away and left a number of children,—mostly grown to maturity. One of the daughters seemed very dejected and mourned her mother very deeply.

"Man's extremity" was indeed "God's opportunity" in my case, for it was not until every earthly means in which I had any hope had failed me, and I had spent hundreds of dollars on oculists, one year of enforced idleness from work, and nearly two years of suffering, and was faced with the awful dread of blindness, that I turned, as a last resort, to God entirely and put myself under Christian Science treatment. My trouble, as I have said, lasted for nearly two years, during which time I had the best medical attendance possible.

For some time past I have felt so really full of gratitude for the Truth revealed to us through Science and Health, that fear has entirely given place to a joyful sense of freedom, sufficient at least to enable me to express something of my gratitude and tell something of our experience, that may be helpful to others. My husband and I had been brought up in the Episcopal Church, with a strong religious sense of faith in God and belief in His existence.

For years I had believed that the time must come when Christianity and science would be found compatible, when the teachings of Jesus would be made practical and his works repeated, for I realized sorrowfully that Christianity was only being talked, not lived. When a Christian Scientist, some two years and a half ago, told me that my hope was already fulfilled, it seemed to me very natural and beautiful.

I have been in Christian Science about three years; it came to me by a good friend just when I was in a very bad way. I had been a member of the Baptist Church from early manhood, over fifty years; prominent in all good work in my church.

FOR the good received through Christian Science I offer the following from my own experience. About eight years ago, before knowing anything about Christian Science, I was most miserable in mind and body.