For anyone born and brought up in Christian Science, as I have been, there are so many reasons for gratitude that one testimony seems inadequate. A recent experience has been so beautiful to me that I should like to report it very gratefully.
For a number of reasons it seemed wise to make arrangements for me to go to a hospital for the birth of my baby. The period of my pregnancy was so harmonious that perhaps I was not so alert as a wise Christian Scientist should be. However, early in the eighth month, my confinement suddenly took place. My little boy's birth was not only premature, but complicated, and when I awoke with an intuitive knowledge that something was wrong, the doctor told me kindly and frankly that there was no possible hope for his life. He was in the incubator, but nothing further could be done for him. The lungs were too congested for him to live more than two hours longer at the most, and it seemed more a matter of minutes than of hours.
I listened to the doctor, understanding clearly everything he said, but with no dismay in my heart. My first thought was that my little boy's spiritual inheritance was so great that nothing of this sort could happen. From early childhood I had been taught that God is Life, and this thought not only sustained me, but seemed to enfold me. In perfect confidence I immediately got in touch with a Christian Science practitioner, who took up the work at once. Then I lay back and found my mind filled with those beautiful verses from Psalms, which had been in the Lesson-Sermon in the Christian Science Quarterly for that week: "Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me. If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me. Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee." I had not realized that I knew them, but there they were, filling my consciousness with such a clear sense of God's presence and all that it meant, that there was no room for fear.
