I would like to express my gratitude for what Christian Science has taught and is teaching me each day. I did not come into Christian Science for the healing, but because I saw that those who studied it had something I did not have, and something they did not have before they began to study it, and I wanted to know what that something was. While I believed there was a God, I did not understand much about Him. I felt that He was very far away, and that I did not need Him anyway.
I studied Christian Science some time before I received any light, but finally a sentence from Science and Health appealed to me. It was this: "Let unselfishness, goodness, mercy, justice, health, holiness, love—the kingdom of heaven—reign within us, and sin, disease, and death will diminish until they finally disappear" (p. 248). Thereafter other passages began to open up and light came into my darkened consciousness. When I had studied for some time, the opportunity came to prove the power of God. One day I struck the fleshy part of my thumb against a needle which was sticking up in the covering of my cutting-table, and it broke off and was embedded in my hand so far that only the thread was left hanging.
Not wishing any one to know what had happened, after trying in vain to get the needle out I went on with my work (I was then cutter and draper in a dressmaking establishment), declaring the truth as best I could; but soon those around me noticed that something was the matter, so I decided to inform the managers. They immediately said I would have to go to a doctor, and I thought that perhaps it was better to have the needle removed. I had to wait some time before I could see the physician, and this gave me more time to prove God's power. At last my turn came, and I told the doctor what had happened. As he began to make an incision, I wished that I might sit down, and he asked me to do so, giving me a chair. I then closed my eyes as he went on with his work, and in a moment I heard him walk away. The needle was out with no pain whatever.
