I have felt for some time that I should acknowledge what Christian Science has done for me and my family. I had been a church member from childhood, and found many warm and true friends thereby, but when sickness and sorrow came to me I did not get what I most needed. I prayed as earnestly as a fond mother could that God would spare to us our two lovely boys, aged twenty and seventeen years, but both passed away with lung trouble within two years' time. My heart seemed crushed at the second one's death, and I began to lose faith in God, thinking my two remaining boys would go likewise. A dear friend, who was a Christian Scientist, loaned me a copy of Science and Health. I read it through twice, but could not grasp the spiritual meaning, and as my friend was leaving the city and asked for the book, I told her I did not need it any longer. But when the book was gone I missed it so much that I purchased a copy and started in to read it through again. Before I had finished the chapter on "Prayer" I was a changed woman. I had been wearing a rubber stocking for a very bad case of varicose veins, but I was enabled to lay this aside and can truthfully say I am entirely cured of the trouble.
I shall never forget the first time I called on a practitioner for help. Our baby, then three years old, had been subject to throat trouble all his life, and when he was taken with a very bad attack and my husband said, "Telephone at once for a doctor—he is a very sick child," I think, as nearly as I can understand the lesson in the Bible of Abraham offering up Isaac as a sacrifice, that I felt as he did when I went to the telephone. I seemed to hear a voice saving, "Trust in God," and I called a Christian Science practitioner instead of our family doctor. She told me to read the 91st Psalm and she would treat the child. I went to my bedroom, and when my husband saw me take the Bible and sit down to read he seemed to think I had lost my reason, as I had grieved so for my two loved ones whom I had recently lost. He said, "Clara, do not trifle with Christian Science now, this child is too sick;" but I told him to lie down and go to sleep, that I had left the child in God's care. I read the 91st Psalm many times, and when I went to the crib the child was sleeping peacefully and was perspiring. This healing was seven years ago, and he has never had the disease since. He was also cured of a rupture, caused by a fall, and of various childish diseases without taking a drop of medicine; which tells of great freedom for the mother.
I could write all day and not tell half that Christian Science has done for me and my family, but I am very grateful to dear Mrs. Eddy for bringing this healing truth to us.— St. Joseph, Mo.
