IT seems to me that not a few of the readers of our periodicals delay giving their testimonies for publication for the sole reason that they have so much to tell. One truly shrinks from using so much valuable space; therefore, will the readers of this testimony kindly pardon the sparseness of detail in what I have to write. It is now fifteen months since I was given my first lessons in dealing with rheumatic trouble. After a week of fruitless effort to get relief by material means, a dear friend and neighbor asked me if I would care to see a Christian Science practitioner. Well, this sounded a little queer, for I had betimes said and thought some things about Christian Science that were not at all complimentary, so I demurred at first. But so great was my esteem for my friend, and so tiresome was my bodily discomfort, that I at last yielded.
My first visit to the practitioner was a rather novel one. We were total strangers, and upon his asking me to state my case, all I could say was that I was in great pain and had found no relief. He told me that he had but little time to give me just then, but that if I would come down on a certain evening that week he would give me a treatment. He picked up a pocket Testament and said, "In the mean time I would like you to take this home and read the four Gospels, noting very carefully how Jesus healed the sick." I have since smiled at what I then considered the man's presumption. How did he know that I was not already a Bible student and knew as much of the Scriptures as he? But he seemed to divine intuitively that I needed a good dose of Holy Writ. In my day I had written and published six books, had preached this same gospel of "On earth peace, good will toward men," but the one key-note that swells the Christian Science anthem with music of rejoicing was lacking in them. I would have written differently had I seen the light in my earlier years. So, when my good friend handed me the Gospels, I thought I was getting off easy, for, from my limited knowledge of Christian Science, I had only surmised what he might do to me. The prescription was indeed just what I needed. Having been prejudiced against the Bible in earlier years by an overly zealous aunt, I had never been a Bible reader, but now I found these Gospels the most engaging reading of my life. I do not know just when the pain left me; I had seemed to lose my interest in it —but go it did the next day, and my eyes were opened and I was being born again.
I at once bought a copy of Science and Health and began work in earnest. I had been troubled with deafness since boyhood and with stomach trouble for thirty years. Like many another, I had never dreamed but that these complaints were beyond the reach of any remedy. But soon came Christmas morning. I was lying in bed, thinking over what I had been reading, when I suddenly found myself counting the strokes of the clock in the adjoining room. I was counting them just as if I had always done so and that it was nothing unusual, but when the clock stopped striking, I discovered in a whirl of ecstasy that I had heard for one brief moment as other people hear. I think T was too elated, and as a result I did not hear any better than before. We should not be too elated when good comes to us; it is man's divine right, and should be treated as truly natural, which it is. Neither dreamed I that a thirty-years experience with stomach trouble could be overcome by Christian Science, but soon my wife was rejoiced to find me eating in a normal way, which I have been doing now for fifteen months, with only an occasional slight return of the old trouble. The reader of this may refer his friends to me as regards sanitarium foods—I have tried them all. Now let us close by a brief reference to bodily fatigue. I have overcome all sense of fatigue during the long business hours. No matter how hard I work, I go home perfectly rested, where before it was easy to give up to the belief of fatigue. I do not marvel that Christian Scientists are prosperous. I have not yet made all my demonstrations, though my hearing is returning gradually, which gives me great hope.
