The time has come when I can no longer withhold my written expression of gratitude for what Christian Science has done for me. In the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mary Baker Eddy states (p. 369), "The prophylactic and therapeutic (that is, the preventive and curative) arts belong emphatically to Christian Science, as would be readily seen, if psychology, or the Science of Spirit, God, was understood." It is particularly for this preventive art that I wish to give thanks.
As soon as Christian Science was presented to me, I bought the textbook and read it through. I knew at once that it was what I had always been searching for, but to my material way of thinking it was difficult to understand. Even so, one sentence which I loved stood out. It was on page 421: "There is no disease." To me, this thought was wonderful, and I accepted it completely. I began to attend a branch Church of Christ, Scientist, to study the Lesson-Sermons in the Christian Science Quarterly, and to read the periodicals.
At that time I had two small girls, and it was my heartfelt prayer that I might bring them up without recourse to materia medica in any form. To me, it was unnatural that children should be expected to have ailments as a matter of course. My study soon showed me the unwisdom of planting seedlings of disease in the unfolding thought of children by discussing diseases in the home.
My prayer was answered. The girls are now grown to adulthood, and during their growing up, on no occasion was medication given. There were testing times, and I am very grateful for the loving work of practitioners. So-called children's ailments touched them lightly but were soon expelled. A recurrent condition of asthma was finally routed when fear was overcome.
Exemption from medical inspection at school was asked for and granted. However, when the children were about eleven and twelve years of age, they changed schools, and a medical examination was insisted upon. When I talked over the situation with a practitioner, she made the remark, "Those children have already passed the only examination there is."
"What is that?" I asked.
She answered, "In the first chapter of Genesis it is stated, 'God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.' "
I was comforted. After the medical examination at school, the doctor made the remark, "If all the children were like these, I shouldn't have anything to do." The next physical inspection came when the elder of the two girls joined one of the women's services at the age of twenty-one. The verdict of the examining doctor was, "First class."
On one occasion I suffered a badly sprained ankle. The pain was agonizing, and I could not stand on the foot for some time. A companion and I repeated "the scientific statement of being,"' found on page 468 of Science and Health, and presently I went on with what I had intended to do. I was unafraid at the sight of the severe swelling and discoloration, and before long that ankle was as normal as the other.
I am happy to have found the way of Life. For the privilege of membership in The Mother Church and of serving in a branch church, as well as for the uplifting experience of class instruction, I am very grateful.— Edinburgh, Scotland.
