I wish to give grateful testimony to the correctness of the foregoing statement of my mother regarding her illness in Germany in the winter of 1911. When I reached her on the evening of Sunday, Feb. 5, her condition was such that it seemed as if she might pass on at any moment. During my journey from London I had declared the truth almost without ceasing, in order to realize the love and all-protecting power of God and the consequent unreality of sickness of every kind. This enabled me to overcome not only my own fears, but also those of my sister and her young daughter, who, up to my arrival, had been my mother's sole attendants. The result was immediately apparent, for within half an hour of my coming a marked improvement in my mother's condition took place. The next morning she was able to sit up in bed with assistance, to take frequent nourishment, even to laugh and joke, and by the early morning of Tuesday the 7th the acute inflammation and the swelling of the head, face, and ears, which had reached extraordinary proportions on Saturday, had practically disappeared, together with all other symptoms supposed to attend this complaint.
Not only does this case illustrate the nothingness of disease and death when met by Truth (for it is no exaggeration to say that to mortal seeming the patient was literally snatched out of the clutches of the "last enemy"), but it also proves the power which even a slight understanding of the truth gives us to resist mortal mind and to repose our full trust in God. Alone among strangers, and with all the responsibility of my mother's illness devolving upon her, my sister during several days steadfastly withstood the entreaties of a large number of the other residents in the pension, backed in some instances by threats of invoking the laws of the country, if she did not call in a medical man. She would certainly not have been able to take this stand had she not been fortified by her unswerving conviction of the truth of the Christian Science teachings and the inefficacy of material remedies.
All the circumstances attending my mother's recovery made a great impression upon the other inmates of the pension, and even became the subject of conversation in the adjacent palace of a reigning Grand Duke, in the course of which the fact was revealed that a prominent member of his entourage was a Christian Scientist. I am happy to say that her healing has proved permanent. It is also remarked by those who live with her, and by her circle of friends, that her general health and vigor are at the present time noticeably superior to what they were prior to the illness which forms the subject of her testimony; and indeed non-Scientists in her neighborhood are in the habit of describing her as "a wonder."
