I desire to testify to the wonderful benefits received by me recently from Christian Science. Delicate always, succeeding illnesses, each more critical than its predecessor, and described by the doctors as nervous breakdown, at length brought me to a state of utter incapacity for work or the enjoyment of existence. Reason did not desert me, but my condition was such that reading, writing, talking. or anything other than sleep or stupefaction under drugs, was unbearable. I was for two years under the advice of a London physician, and took the strongest doses of sedatives he dared give me. Stomach and bowel troubles, etc., in addition to worrying about everything, were some of my erroneous beliefs. A respectable death was the only thing I hoped for, and I went down to Brighton ill and miserable, my home broken up. a dismal human wreck, the result, as the doctors declared, of the strenuous life. Here the seacliffs were at hand, over which many a better man, it seemed, had found oblivion and rest from what appeared to me to be the horrors of being a charge on one's relatives. The kind London physician had watched over me for two years without charge, and was so sorry for me that in a letter to my wife he sent money to keep me at the seaside, as he considered me unfit for work and desired me to be placed in a home under care.
I continued to take drugs, but still grew worse, and my landlady in Brighton telegraphed for my wife. I could then only go out in a wheeled chair, and had to creep up stairs, taking rest at every step. My misery was almost beyond endurance, but, thank God, my wife consulted with another doctor, who had attended me in Yorkshire. He told her of a most wonderful cure of a patient of his by Christian Science, and said it was the only thing for me and begged her to get me to try it. My brother-in-law had been cured by Christian Science of nervous trouble contracted Whilst under the Egyptian government at Cairo. He had been treated by a physician of Manchester, England, who had become a Christian Scientist. But I begged my wife, when I was told this, not to mention it again, and thus I had another twelve months of miserable suffering, which almost broke both our hearts. Last Christmas the physician who usually saw me was away and a clever friend took his place, a very able London medical man. This doctor also recommended Christian Science to me, saying the power of mind over matter was wonderful, but he supposed one still went in for drugs. He then gave me a fresh sort of medicine, but this made me worse, and I again refused Christian Science, though I very nearly consented to see a practitioner.
My wife was obliged to leave me alone at Brighton to return to her grandmother, who was ill, and I agreed to see a Scientist, believing, as she put it, that it was my last chance. The text-book, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," was brought to me by a loving Scientist, and I had only read it one day when I decided that Christian Science was true, whether I got better or not. The teaching was so clear that the logic and metaphysical reasoning appealed to me, the proof to my mind being absolute. Much of my reading in the past had been philosophical and religious, with the result that agnosticism was my creed. The ordinary idea of the death of Jesus to appease an angry God had seemed to me too awful for words. The immediate mental elevation caused by reading Science and Health was so great that drugs were thrown away, and also a truss which I had been wearing. I ceased to listen to mortal mind and at once began to eat freely of all sorts of things of which I had before been afraid. With God's help, through support of a dear practitioner, I then began to get rid of my ailments, and to-day, after four months' treatment, I am healed and happy, able to go anywhere and do anything. Truth has destroyed the dire belief of heredity and the burden of oppression caused by past sins, and it is indeed sweetness and content to know that God is of too pure eyes to see evil. The love and help which was shown to me by all the Scientists in Brighton was indeed the reflection of divine Love.
