The difference in the practical working of scholastic theology and of theology as taught in Christian Science has been strikingly demonstrated to me through experience at differing periods.
In early womanhood I was a member of an orthodox church, and a faithful attendant upon the church services. My work for the church was sadly interrupted, often hindered altogether, by so-called constitutional weakness, manifesting itself in various forms of illness. Among them was a gastric disturbance that sometimes developed symptoms of poisoning. I recall especially one attack of this trouble that came upon me in the church. My face became swollen under the eyes and around the mouth, and the sensation of prickling in the stomach and general puffiness in the body gave so much discomfort that I felt obliged to leave the church. Under material remedies and tender nursing from the best of mothers, I was relieved from that attack in about twenty-four hours, only to be followed by similar ones at more or less frequent intervals.
Years after this experience I found myself one beautiful Sunday morning in the Mother Church, having heard the good news and joyfully received it a short time previously. The service had just begun, and I had scarcely seated myself when all the old symptoms of poisoning came over me so suddenly that I had no time to think before the swelling under the right eye had nearly closed it. I began immediately to apply my little understanding to the destruction of fear, and turned my thought with earnest attention to the Lesson-Sermon, feeling sure the angel message would come that should annihilate the error. I had not long to wait ere it came, in clear, unfaltering tones of firm conviction: "Truth has but one reply to all error,—to sin, sickness, and death: 'Dust [nothingness] thou art, and unto dust [nothingness] shalt thou return'" (Science and Health, p. 545). The healing was instantaneous. All the uncomfortable sensations disappeared at once, and have never reappeared in the four years that have passed since that day.
