It is with a deep sense of gratitude for Christian Science, and also with a desire to help others, that I give this testimony. In November, 1914, I decided to try Christian Science to see if it could heal, for I felt it would be useless for me to continue medical treatment. I was suffering from consumption, and was wretched and full of fear. A few months previous I had suffered from a severe hemorrhage of the right lung, and for several nights I could not sleep for fear of another attack. My fiance asked me to allow him to get help from a Christian Science practitioner, and to please him I consented. I had no faith in Christian Science, and was greatly prejudiced against what I believed it to be. I also consented to my friend's reading to me from "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, being willing to do anything to allay his anxiety. I heard him read Mrs. Eddy's quotations from the Bible, "Perfect love casteth out fear," and again, "God is love." These two sentences arrested my thinking, and when pondering them that night I realized for the first time that Love was divine Principle, God, and not merely an attribute of God. Suddenly a wonderful sense of joy and peace entered my thought, and I lost all fear, although I did not sleep. I said to myself: "If this is Christian Science, thank God for Mrs. Eddy; and as soon as I am able to rise, I shall read carefully that book Science and Health." I kept this promise and was convinced that its teaching was intensely spiritual, but was too lofty for me then to understand; and so I put the book aside for a future time. I did not realize how much it had helped me. as I attributed a feeling of strength and happiness to a change of air, having been several weeks at the seaside.
However, as the winter approached I began to feel ill again, and spoke to the physician of my fear of living in Ireland, owing to its climate. It was at this time I asked for treatment in Christian Science, and felt a great improvement at the end of a month. The doctor, who had called to see another patient in our home, examined me and pronounced a change for the better, and asked what I had been taking. I told him I had taken nothing, but did not inform him of having Christian Science treatment. I saw that I must depend only on the help of Christian Science, and abandoned all reliance on medical treatment, with the result that I was completely healed. It was about five years before I experienced the complete healing, as I had several relapses, and symptoms that had not at first shown themselves appeared and had to be destroyed. I had to get rid of much fear, and often found myself making mental pictures of the trouble when I ought to have been realizing that as God's child I had never suffered and was always a perfect idea in divine Mind. To-day I am a strong and healthy woman, able to live a busy and active life.
I should like to express my deep gratitude for the loving help and guidance of the practitioner who first helped me in 1915, and again in later years; and for the other practitioners who helped to destroy the wrong thinking that would flood my mentality during this time of trial; also for the help of my husband, who as my fiance first told me of Christian Science, and who read to me repeatedly and encouraged me, when depressed, to depend on what I was learning of the power of God to heal.
