My gratitude for Christian Science is boundless. Through the study of the Bible, together with Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mrs. Eddy, a wonderful new world of goodness and love has been revealed to me. I have received healings both mentally and physically. I have also had many proofs of guidance and protection. Here are two experiences I specially value.
One summer while staying with relatives, one of whom was antagonistic to what he thought Christian Science to be, I wakened early one morning feeling very sick, with symptoms of appendicitis, I thought. No diagnosis was made, since I would never have thought of turning to a doctor. I tried to get up but fainted after a while. My sister helped me back into bed and started reading the weekly Lesson-Sermon, a lesson that I had studied particularly well because of the antagonism I had felt. At first I could not grasp anything. Everything was spinning around. But when I heard the words "Love is the liberator" from the textbook, Science and Health (p. 225), the light broke through, and suddenly I felt surrounded by God's wonderful love. I was instantly healed, got up, had a hearty breakfast, and started on a long train journey the next day. The feeling that there was antagonism disappeared after that, as I understood more and more that we do not associate with good and evil persons but with God's ideas, which are always good.
Another healing was a valuable lesson for me. Some years ago my right arm stopped functioning normally until at last I could not lift it higher than to the elbow. Then I realized that my prayers and my work to solve the problem had been far too sporadic and not quite Christianly scientific. So I began to study passages in the Bible and Mrs. Eddy's works about "right arm" and "hand." The more I studied the verse from Isaiah (41:10) "I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness," the more the words "my righteousness" struck me. It dawned upon me that I had been believing in self-righteousness both within and without, instead of in God's righteousness, which man can only express through reflection. And so I began to pray to see the nothingness of "the adamant of error" spoken of in the textbook (p. 242): "Self-love is more opaque than a solid body. In patient obedience to a patient God, let us labor to dissolve with the universal solvent of Love the adamant of error,—self-will, self-justification, and self-love,—which wars against spirituality and is the law of sin and death."
