Testimonies of Healing

Truly may it be said, the darkest hour just precedes the dawn, for indeed, I had despaired of ever being healed of that so-called incurable disease, asthma. My physician had prescribed a change of climate, and I had just returned from a three months' stay in Canada where I had expected to have my health entirely restored, but to my dismay I came home very little improved.

Failing to find physical ease after ten years' persistent adherence to the laws of materia medica, hygiene, and physiology, I turned to Christian Science. After reading the text-book, Science and Health, I found it was not a physical system out of order, but a mental system in dis-order; that there was no good in the thought-material I had been building with.

I have to acknowledge the very rapid healing by Christian Science of a very badly cut and injured hand, also the escape without a scratch from an accident where the on-lookers thought the person would surely be killed. I ascribe this complete deliverance entirely to the fact that we had been obeying the Scriptural commandment to "Watch.

Several years ago while in Chicago I first heard of Christian Science. I had been a great sufferer and almost an invalid for many years.

When I was fifteen years old, I became converted at a revival meeting, and soon after joined the Presbyterian Church. A few months later, leaving the town in which I was then living, I moved to Kansas City and joined the First Congregational Church of that city.

When my attention was first drawn to Christian Science, I was in a very bad condition physically, having had a severe bladder trouble the greater part of my life which caused me untold misery, having also the very nervous, irritable disposition which generally accompanies such a condition. I was addicted to the use of profanity and used tobacco to excess.

I have already given testimony to my thankfulness for physical healing after twenty years of seemingly unbearable and incurable invalidism, but that freedom is as nothing compared to the spiritual uplifting and the interpretation given thereby to that dearest and best of books—the Bible. I was always a Bible student, joining the church when but ten years of age and feeling that every Christian must read and love their Bible, but as I reached the age of fourteen, sixteen, and eighteen, I became confused, and filled with doubts at the apparent contradictions found from Genesis to Revelation.

It is five years since we first heard anything about Christian Science, except the name, and had supposed it was only some kind of mind healing and never once dreamed of what it really is. We learned of it through a dear relative who had been, as it seemed to us, wonderfully healed after being an invalid for several years.

Nine years ago I was under that terrible cloud of suffering and despondency, that only those know who have tried every remedy that their kind physicians can suggest, not only without relief, but without further expectation of receiving any, having lost faith in drugs as a healing agency. To my sense, God had not answered my prayers, for I had prayed daily for years, that my suffering might cease, without its ever occurring to me that the healing would come through other than material means.

In May, 1892, I first read Science and Health. For three years previous to that time I was an invalid.