Christian Science means boundless benefits to me; and I feel impelled to bear testimony, that I may help others as others have helped me. "Man's extremity" proved to be "God's opportunity" in my finding this beautiful new-old truth at a time when my very existence seemed engulfed in darkness and despair. For years I had been a helpless invalid, as the result of an injury to the spine caused by a fall from a horse in my schooldays. Materia medica, surgery, osteopathy, chiropractics —in fact almost every known remedy—had but turned hope to despair. The spine was now deformed, the belief being that since the accident had occurred at such a youthful period cartilage had formed in the meantime, and the bones could not now go back to their normal places. I had been brought up in the Methodist Episcopal church, which believed that God sent affliction for some wise purpose; and year by year the well-meaning ministers of this and other churches gathered about my couch of pain, telling me that God had sent this cross upon me and imploring Him to remove it if it were His will—otherwise, to give me grace to bear it; and thus I remained helpless.
Finally a message direct from the Father of love, "with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning," found its way to my tortured sense on the wings of Christian Science. It reversed the old mistaken belief of a God who sends evil, and told me of the loving Father-Mother God, who never afflicts. At first I could grasp but little of so joyous a message, but by holding on to the little that I could understand of the allness of God, who is ever present Life, Truth, and Love, as taught by our beloved Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, and through the help of loyal practitioners, the light dawned at last. By and by, for the healing was slow, the crook disappeared from the spine unnoticed by anyone, and I rose from my invalid's chair with a straight spine, and took my place in the outside world again.
That was more than eleven years ago; and while all defects havenot yet disappeared, the spine gives no evidence to the stranger that it was ever other than normal; and I have had many more evidences of God's love and protective care, some of which have been scarcely less miraculous than that of Daniel's protection in the lions' den. To-day Christian Science is to me the highest hope, giving as it does the most beautiful idea of God and man in His image and likeness that has ever been disclosed to a longing world. And I know that in the degree of my faithfulness to its teaching, I must reap its rewards. I am grateful, indeed, to our Father-Mother God, and to Mrs. Eddy for the great light that Christian Science has brought into the world, and for its wonderful work in lifting the burdens from the children of men.— Washington, District of Columbia.
