Recently, while reading the Sentinel and Journal, it came to me forcibly that I was losing an opportunity when I failed to add my testimony to the many others regarding the great blessing that Christian Science is to mankind. A few years ago I was in Arizona in very poor health. On consulting a doctor and being examined by him I was informed that my lungs, nerves, and heart were in a bad condition. I was advised to sleep out of doors and to take plenty of nourishing food, while tonics and other medicine were administered in liberal doses; but all the time I seemed to be losing instead of gaining. At last a new remedy was sent for, which the doctor hoped would break up the fever I was having each day; if it did not, he said he knew of nothing in medical science that would. But this failed as the others had, and there seemed nothing to do but to become resigned.
One day I was trying to become somewhat interested in what I read, when something seemed to say, so plainly that I was startled, "Why do you not get Mrs. Eddy's book and read it?" I knew of but one Christian Scientist in the town, but I immediately went in search of her, and she loaned me "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," telling me to read it, not in a spirit of criticism, but with an earnest desire to know more about God, and anything I might be unable at first to accept, to leave, not questioning, until as I read I grew more into the understanding. It was thus I learned that the New Testament is an interpreter of the Old; while Science and Health, explaining both, gives us the undivided garment, "woven from the top throughout," not for the few to cast lots for, but free to all who have faith to receive the truth. When I found that matter was without life, hence non-intelligent, I had no more fear of temperature; and when the symptoms appeared, I met them with "the scientific statement of being" (Science and Health, p. 468), and in a few weeks I was entirely restored to health. God sent His word, and it healed me, the psalmist's words proving to be a true saying, "worthy of all acceptation."
This healing is not only for the ills of the flesh, but for a mind distressed. More than a year ago I had a burden of sorrow to bear, and at the time I most needed, as I thought, to be among Christian Scientists, I was obliged to go where there was no sympathy and much opposition to the truth. When the way seemed dark and the light obscure, or when discouragement tried to creep in, some message of help and love always came, and divine Love supplied the need, as our beloved Leader has assured us that it always will. I daily experience that only as I make use of the little knowledge I have, am I ready to receive more, and in so far as we all recognize nothing as possessing reality but God's spiritual creation as found in the first chapter of Genesis, then mortal thought in whatever phase it is manifested cannot touch us, for we are a law unto ourselves, and prove all things by holding fast to that which is good.— Smithville, Ontario.
