I have somewhere read, "Our only excuse for living is that we may glorify God." Now I desire to glorify God and to bear witness to the power of Truth (which is God) by testifying to the wonderful healings which have come to me through reading the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," by Mary Baker Eddy, in conjunction with the Bible. In the year 1904 I read a copy of Science and Health from beginning to end from a sense of duty and love, my sister having left it to me. It made no impression whatever on my thought and I left it at my mother's home, where I was visiting, not valuing it sufficiently to take it to my own home. Ten years later during another visit to my mother, who had recently taken up the study of Christian Science, I was so persistently urged by her to read Science and Health that, merely to please her, I undertook to read it for the second time.
This time it held my attention from the first moment, and before reading one half of it sufficient spiritual awakening had taken place in my consciousness to convince me that this is the truth,—God's message to this generation through the purified and spiritualized thought of our beloved Leader, Mary Baker Eddy. From that moment I read hungrily and thirstily the Bible, Science and Health, all of Mrs. Eddy's other works, and all the Christian Science periodicals. No thought of physical healing presented itself to me, so eager was I to know more of the truth. At the end of the first year I discovered that all my ailments, and they were numerous, had insensibly vanished. Kidney trouble for which I had been under the doctor's care for over a year, and severe headaches weekly and bi-weekly, supposed to result from it, had disappeared, also chronic dysentery which I had had for many years, continual backache, excessive nervousness with periodical spells of morbid depression and weeping, and intermittent periods of misery from a lacerated muscle which had only partially healed after an operation. At the end of three years hay fever and asthma, which I had endured for twenty-five years, were healed. Not once during this time did I have help from a practitioner or any one else. From the moment I became convinced that I had found the truth I ceased using medicine and employing material aids. I strove to be obedient to the teachings of Christian Science and to discard false beliefs as quickly as possible.
During that first year I was healed of the sense of conscious fear, which had been manifested in an exaggerated degree. Now my heart is so full of gratitude to our loving Father-Mother God, the only fear is that I may not sufficiently serve God and glorify His holy name. I have proved the promise contained in the fourth beatitude, "Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled," as well as the wisdom of Paul's admonition, "Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind." My gratitude to God, and to Mrs. Eddy, who made it possible for us to know Him, is inexpressible.— Columbus, Ohio.
