It is five years since I first came in touch with Christian Science, but I have been very slow in grasping its teaching. In the autumn of 1910 I had an operation for an abnormal growth, but the shock to my system, combined with the work and worry of everyday life, kept me from being well, and at the end of two years there was every symptom of a return of the trouble. I knew I might have repeated operations, but death was waiting—it was only a matter of time. My mother had passed on with a malignant growth, and I knew only too well what this growth meant. A friend then advised me to try Christian Science. I asked her if she really believed it' could help me (I was on my way to the doctor's) and she assured me it certainly would. I had two absent treatments, and was healed. Every symptom disappeared, and there has never been the slightest return of the disease or fear that such a thing could return.
Shortly after my operation in 1910, we discovered that my youngest daughter was deaf. She underwent an operation on the tonsils and for nasal growths, and was treated by a specialist for almost two years without benefit. The same friend recommended Christian Science treatment for the child and took me to the practitioner again. I wanted to know why God had made my child deaf. She explained the truth to me, said that God did not send sickness, and told me I must have Science and Health to read. I got a copy, but only read a few lines at a time, and after a little lost their meaning. I got a pamphlet, but still could not grasp the teaching; yet I must have had glimpses of it, for it seemed wonderful to me from the beginning. From a child I had asked what was the use of living, when life seemed such an empty thing; it seemed to me as if everything was chaos and suffering. I read all I could come across to find out what life meant, but only grew more confused.
That was the state of my thought in 1912, when I applied for help in Christian Science. I see now why I have been so slow in understanding the divine Principle. Mrs. Eddy says, "Science must go over the whole ground, and dig up every seed of error's sowing" (Science and Health, p. 79). My daughter is now at a public school, healthy and well, with just the least trace of imperfect hearing. Medicine has not been used by either of us during all this time, whereas I had to take it daily for fifteen years. Nothing I can say is adequate to express what Christian Science means to me, and what I owe to that wonderful woman, our Leader, Mrs. Eddy, for this religion which is blessing the whole world.— Ballymena, County Antrim, Ireland.
