At a very early age, I rejected the thought of a personal God. My parents allowed me to think for myself where religion was concerned, and I began to search for an explanation of the supreme intelligence in which I believed. Several years later, I witnessed a relative's instantaneous healing through Christian Science, and attended a Wednesday evening testimony meeting in a Christian Science church. The thought of God as Mind appealed to me at once, but it seemed more difficult to grasp the thought of God as Love. Throughout the succeeding years, however, as the realization of God as divine Principle, whose law is changeless and all-embracing, has unfolded, it has become easier to understand God as Love. At a recent students' Association meeting an explanation of God as Love was given as having "the constant desire to bless." This has impelled me to give this testimony.
My first healing took place over thirty years ago. There was an epidemic of a dread disease in the city where I lived, and I was exposed to the contagion. The fear of it entered my thought, and one night I manifested every symptom. Turning to God with my whole heart, I clung to "the scientific statement of being" as given on page 468 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, and, realizing that truth, I fell asleep, and awoke in the morning entirely free. Others under medical care spent weeks in isolation. Later a throat condition, which had troubled me every winter since childhood, was overcome in one Christian Science treatment. This trouble has never recurred.
For several years I read the writings of our beloved Leader, and the periodicals, loved Christian Science, and attended the church services. Life seemed very happy, and any erroneous condition that came up was quickly met. Then a very sorrowful problem came into my experience, and for the first time I was forced to real earnest study. There were many periods of struggle during which I was much helped through the work of faithful practitioners. But the final healing of this sorrow came only when, in the very darkest moment, in the depths of despair, I surrendered completely to God and was able to say truthfully, "Not my will, but thine, be done." Then the light appeared, and with it came peace; and self-pity, selfishness, self-will, and grief yielded. For this chastening experience I am grateful, for through it I was awakened to a greater desire to help my fellow men, to support earnestly our movement through church membership, to have a greater degree of tolerance, love, and compassion. And in a satisfying measure I have been freed of loneliness and quick temper.
