This era in which we are now living is surely blessed by the lifework of Mary Baker Eddy, the greatest spiritual thinker since Jesus' time. She has left us the fruit of her years of consecrated work, the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health, the key that has opened the Bible for thousands of people who can testify to Truth's healing power.
During the last twenty years I have had many healings through Christian Science. The most outstanding one was of a virulent fever, to which I fell a victim about seven years ago when I was visiting in Africa. I was able to contact a friend, who was interested in Christian Science, and I asked her to cable to a practitioner in England for help.
Shortly afterward I was taken in an unconscious state to a nursing home, where I was put on the danger list. The doctors stated that my condition was the worst on their records, and after a few days they pronounced my case hopeless and gave me only a short while to live. A cable was sent to my relatives in England, and a sister, living some distance away in Africa, had come to be with me. She was told by the doctors that everything humanly possible had been done for me, but that I could not be expected to live through the night.
At this stage another cable was sent to the practitioner, informing him of this alarming situation and asking him for further help. From that time on I began to recover. I was most anxious to return home with my sister, who was leaving almost immediately, but I could not get the doctor's consent until I could prove that I was able to sit up for at least ten minutes. Relying on God to give me strength and declaring that "with God all things are possible" (Matt. 19:26), I was able to fulfill this requirement within two days. Though I had to be carried by stretcher to the train, travel over two hundred miles, and be met by stretcher-bearers to carry me to my destination, I suffered no ill effects.
Although to all those around me I appeared to be dying, I never doubted that I would recover. During intervals of consciousness I was always able to repeat at least a portion of the Lord's Prayer, with its spiritual interpretation, given in our textbook (pp. 16, 17), and I was able to dwell on the memory of class instruction, which it had been my privilege to have a few years previously.
I remembered that it had been said that neither distance, time, nor the nature or name of a disease could in any way affect or obstruct the demonstration of Truth. St. Paul said (Rom. 8:35-39): "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? . . . I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." And Mrs. Eddy says in our textbook (p. 559), "The 'still, small voice' of scientific thought reaches over continent and ocean to the globe's remotest bound."
I shall never forget my awakening from this dark experience. There was a sense of beauty and gentleness everywhere, as though I beheld all things in a suffusion of soft and tender light. "The loveliness of Love [was] all around" (Christian Science Hymnal, No. 64). For this wonderful glimpse of spiritual light, I shall ever be grateful. I rapidly regained my normal strength and weight and was soon able to fly home to England.
My deep gratitude goes out to our beloved Leader, Mrs. Eddy, and to the whole Christian Science movement, including our practitioners.— London, England.
