The logic and reasonableness of Christian Science appealed to me when I was desperately in need of God. As I read the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, I knew I was beginning to learn self-evident, eternal truths about God. With more earnest study I realized I was being "transformed by the renewing of [my] mind" (Rom. 12:2).
This great awakening from the belief of material life with its accessories of sin and sorrow, sickness and medical methods, of godlessness and hopelessness, came at a time when years of ill-health had brought me close to invalidism. I had been hospitalized seven times and had undergone five surgical operations. I was not in better health because of all this, but far worse and in a state of nervous exhaustion. When I read the Christian Science textbook a condition of impairment of sight was at once healed, and health and vigor became increasingly apparent. Whereas formerly there had been little strength for any tasks, gradually I could do more and more. Today, after twelve years, I can carry on whatever it is necessary for me to do with energy and interest, and my health is splendid.
No greater blessing has come to me than the illumination Christian Science throws upon the Scriptures. As a child I had been given no encouragement to read the Bible, so I knew very little about this book. Before I turned to Christian Science I had no concept whatever of the nature of God; I could not have said what He was or what He meant to me. After reading Science and Health I understood somewhat the nature of God as Life, Truth, and Love, and as Spirit, Soul, Mind, Principle. With my first applications of its rules I could say, "There is a God, here and now; a God of love and of infinite power." And the Bible, with its spiritual message of hope for mankind, became a book of promise to me. It soon became my habit to go to it when in distress, with full expectancy of finding a solution to problems.
Once, when events had brought several moves in and out of our state, and home conditions were unsettled, I opened my Bible to this verse (II Sam. 22:33): "God is my strength and power: and he maketh my way perfect." Within a few days a satisfactory apartment was found and a harmonious home established.
At another time I was about to undertake my first long drive alone when the suggestion of fear of traffic assailed me. It was natural now for me to turn to my Bible, and I found assurance in this verse (Science and Health, p. 131): "The central fact of the Bible is the superiority of spiritual over physical power."
I had a serious injury from a fall which threw me down six or seven steps to a cement pavement. Before I picked myself up I declared aloud, "Thank God nothing is broken." When I stood up my right arm hung limp. I began to declare aloud that God is all Life, and that "all is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation" (ibid., p. 468). Within two or three minutes I used my right hand to sign an express receipt. Later in the day I was seized with such violent pain in the right shoulder, where the full weight of the fall had come, that I could not think, but could only pace up and down. My daughter read Science and Health to me for an hour or more, and soon I was lying down resting. The truth which came to me during her reading, and which brought about the healing, is on page 306 of the textbook: "But man cannot be separated for an instant from God, if man reflects God. Thus Science proves man's existence to be intact." It came to me with increasing understanding, as I pondered this statement, that there had not been an instant when I was separated from the ever-presence of God, not even an instant in which a fall could be real or man be touched by accident. My existence was intact. In three or four days I was using the arm naturally.
During the twelve years I have been a student of Christian Science there has been no sickness in our family other than attacks of what are called cold and grippe, both of which have yielded to Science treatment. A severe case of ivy poisoning was healed through patient, persistent reliance on God and His love. There has been glorious opportunity for proving the supremacy of God, Spirit, over the beliefs of material existence.
I am humbly grateful to God, to whom all things are possible, and to Christ Jesus and Mrs. Eddy for their marvelous demonstrations of His power.— Suncook, New Hampshire.
