I feel that it is a great privilege for me to be able to testify and give thanks to God for His loving-kindness, protection, guidance, and unchanging love. Through the understanding of His government as taught by Christ Jesus, and so clearly revealed to us in this age by our beloved Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, I have been brought safely through "the valley of the shadow of death" several times.
Twenty years ago I was given up by doctors, who claimed that my lungs were about gone and I had but a short time to live. I was bowed and stooped and suffered untold agony, and labored constantly for breath. I was instantaneously healed of this difficulty during the reading of a Christian Science Bible Lesson—the first one to which I had ever listened. The healing has been permanent. My next healing was of diphtheria. On my way home from school suddenly everything turned black. As I was close to a Christian Science practitioner's home, I entered. That was all I knew until late the next afternoon. This loving friend and practitioner put me to bed and worked for me for several hours. My condition seemed to grow worse, and my physical needs were so many that she decided to telegraph to another practitioner, a few hundred miles away, asking her to take up the metaphysical work. By the next evening I was completely healed, and continued on my way home. I met the principal of our school, and he said he was glad to see me well, for he feared when I attended my class the previous day that I was coming down with diphtheria. For this healing I was and am deeply grateful, for it proved that a correct understanding of God heals us of our infirmities.
Again, when influenza was covering our land, I was beautifully sustained. At the time I was employed as a bookkeeper; my duties were heavy, and my presence seemed necessary. One Saturday afternoon I told my employer that I should have to go home, and I did so. That evening a friend who was a physician called, and being much alarmed at my condition asked me to allow him to take me to a hospital, where I would receive proper care. I told him that the kindest thing he could do was to leave me alone with God. "Oh," he said, "Christian Science is all right for small ailments and imaginary ills, but when it comes to a matter of life and death, then it is different—then we need the best care and attention that can be had. It will be weeks before you will be able to be up and around again." I told him that "man's extremity is God's opportunity," and to Him belonged all power. He finally understood that I meant what I said and left with the conviction, he later told me, that he would never again see me alive. That night was a bitter struggle; but I kept on declaring man's oneness with God and affirming that man in God's likeness could not express anything but Godlikeness, as we are taught in Christian Science. When morning came I wanted to attend church, but found I was too weak to stand. So I studied the Bible and "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mrs. Eddy throughout the day. That night I slept well. Monday morning found me attending to my duties as usual, entirely free from any pain or weariness.
