Thirteen years ago I was healed by Christian Science. I had been an invalid for three years previous to this time. The year before, I lay in bed all winter with a tumor in my side, and although I was under the care of the best physicians, and had a regular trained nurse who cared for me day and night for twelve weeks, I received no lasting benefit. The next spring I was able to be up and around, but suffered all the time with pain in my side, backache and constipation, besides which my kidneys were in a very bad condition and I had catarrh and very weak eyes. There was a thick coating on my tongue all the time, and I do not think a cloud ever came up in the sky that I did not have neuralgia in some part of my body. I was in this condition all summer, and my weight was between eighty-five and ninety-five pounds. In the fall I commenced to cough then the doctor told my husband that he had better take me to a warmer climate, else I would go into quick consumption, and that I could not possibly live through another winter in Kansas. We decided to go to California. My husband sent me with my two small children and my nurse from our home in Hiawatha down to Topeka to visit my mother while he arranged his business. I was there three weeks before he came. I grew worse all the time, and could feel another tumor coming in my side. I could not sit up more than an hour at a time.
When my husband came he consulted a physician in Topeka, who said that I had consumption, and that nothing could be done. He also advised change of climate, but by that time I was not able to travel. Then my husband heard that New Mexico was a good climate for consumptives; he went down to see what it was like, and thought perhaps I would get better, and that my mother could take me to him. About this time everything became very dark to me. I began to realize my condition. I fully expected to die, and felt that I was going very fast. My mother thought, too, that I had come home to die. My minister came and talked to me about preparing to die, but I did not want to leave my little ones, and I could not read the Bible, for every time I took it up I felt I was preparing for death. Then I would feel condemned because I could not be reconciled to what I had been taught was the will of God, and it seemed that a great black cloud settled down around me. Everything was dark. I did not want my mother to talk to me, nor the children to come near me. I did not know that the sun ever shone. My mother had written to my husband that if he wanted to see me alive he should come home immediately.
Such was my condition when an aunt came through Topeka and stopped for a day to see me and ask me to try Christian Science, as she had been wonderfully healed by it. The day she was there I was suffering terribly with my kidneys, and knowing that she had been such a good nurse before she knew anything of Christian Science, I begged her to tell me of something to relieve me. She would tell me of nothing but Christian Science, and asked me to try it for just one week, but I would not promise. I was afraid to give up my medicine for so long. That night my aunt went on, and my mother was up with me all night, making poultices and working to relieve my sufferings. The next morning I decided that something must be done. I must either get a doctor or try "those Scientists." I reasoned that they would expect me to give up all material remedies; but they would give me nothing that would hurt me, and perhaps I could get along without my medicine three days. My mother was very willing to take me, as she felt there was no other help for me any way. I felt like a drowning man grasping for a straw. I was without hope and without God in the world.
I knew that no human being could heal me. I realized that only God could heal me, and that I would have to be perfectly honest and live up to my highest sense of right. I told the practitioner at first that if it required any faith on my part, I had none; also that I believed Jesus and the apostles healed, but I thought that the days of miracles were past. He said, "God is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. He loves His children just the same to-day as He did in those times. We have the same God now as they had then. If you get better you will have faith, will you not?" I said, "Yes, just as fast as I get better I will have faith." He said, "That is all I ask." I then said that I had been told to prepare to die. He said, "Prepare to live, for God is Life." No one knows what those few words meant to me. I did not realize it myself at the time, but it simply meant the lifting of that black cloud which had hung over me so long. He then gave me a treatment and I started home, and by the time I got home the cold from which I had been suffering had disappeared. My mother noticed it, but she did not say a word. She was afraid to say anything for fear she would break the spell, and I went to bed without my feet getting cold that night. The next day I went for my treatment alone, and I went every day for ten weeks. After the first treatment the neuralgia disappeared; since the second treatment my kidneys have not troubled me. The first two weeks the cough seemed worse, then it became better, and I never knew just when it left. After the third week I discarded a support which I had been unable to leave off for over a year, and I took off a couple of porous plasters as fast as I could get them off my back. At the end of ten weeks I was indeed a new woman. The tumor which was starting in my side disappeared, and the constipation was entirely cured, I now have perfect health and weigh one hundred and fifty-two pounds.
I have unbounded faith in Christian Science, and while I received the physical help I needed, which is by no means a small part of the work of Christian Science, yet this seems small compared with the spiritual benefits I have received through the teachings of Christian Science. It has given me a true understanding of what God is, and my relation to Him. It has given me an assurance that my prayers will be answered, if I but live the truth. I feel deeply grateful to God, and to Mrs. Eddy for her wonderful book, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," which opens our eyes to the great truths of the Bible and helps us to live the true Christian life.
Galena, Kan.
