I did not come to Christian Science for physical healing; in fact, when I first became interested in it I meant to leave that part out, as it seemed to me there were so many other things which I wanted more; but I had not been reading Mrs. Eddy's book, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," many weeks before I had to realize for myself that Christian Science is like the seamless robe and that we are not allowed to divide it,—a conviction which came to me in such a way that I could not doubt it.
I had to realize this yet again, more fully, when I went through class—I think perhaps I had not been grateful enough beforehand. I now see that I took it as a matter of course, and I know that I did not realize at all what the spiritual benefit meant. I was thinking of the letter, which had begun to appeal to me very much indeed, and which I wanted to enjoy more fully; but with the instruction there seemed to come such a wonderful light that I just had to try to realize the spiritual, and then at the very end I had to realize the physical by my own hearing becoming right. I had not known till then the quality which had been missing; and I think it was this, and my great distance from Truth that was the cause of the "shock," of which Mrs. Eddy speaks in Science and Health (p. 53), that came with my full realization of the healing.
About the age of thirteen, I was very deaf for a year, following an attack of measles, and at the end of that time the difficulty had grown very much worse. I had been taken to the family doctor, and also to a specialist, but their treatment only seemed to frighten me and did me no good. Then my mother took me to another doctor, a nice old man who had a "home" at Malvern, and I remember how I felt when he said there was nothing organically wrong, but that I seemed to have been frightened and that all treatment was to he stopped, that I should be out of doors a good deal, and enjoy myself. In six months I thought I was cured; but realized the difference when I really was healed, and this was when I was going through class, for the spiritual understanding which came to me at that time through the teaching of Christian Science brought about the full manifestation of harmony. Instead of a woodenness which hitherto had seemed to accompany my sense of hearing, I became conscious of a perfect volume of sound; everything became clear and distinct, and I now know, as Mrs. Eddy has taught us in Science and Health, that the only true healing is that which is accomplished through the action of God—divine, omnipotent Mind.
