A new student of Christian Science attended a Wednesday evening testimony meeting. She was struggling with a severe chest cold, and after several disturbing seizures of sneezing and coughing during the service, she gasped in a whisper to a woman sitting next to her, "Perhaps I shouldn't have come to church tonight." In a flash the stranger placed her hand warmly on the other's and said, "Oh, yes, you should. God directed you here. The purpose of a Christian Science church service is to heal."
This was a new idea to the young student, for she had never thought of the service in those terms before. But in childlike expectancy she listened and waited. Before the end of the service she was relaxed and breathing freely. A few hours later she was completely free. This concrete proof of the healing power of divine Love permeating a church service not only roused the young woman from a lifelong tolerance of colds but served to initiate a life vital with a sense of mission and spiritual meaning. Here indeed was "the substance of things hoped for," Hebr. 11:1; found in Christian Science, showing the signs and manifesting the spirit of Christ.
Illustrated in this spiritual event was the purpose of that God-inspired woman, Mary Baker Eddy, whose Christly office it was to organize a church "which should reinstate primitive Christianity and its lost element of healing."Historical Sketch printed in the Manual of The Mother Church by Mary Baker Eddy, p. 17; Her church was to manifest the substance of Spirit, thus demonstrating the system of healing of Christ Jesus.
