After an accident last year, when I...

After an accident last year, when I seemed unable to study, my thought turned toward the healings I had previously experienced in Christian Science. I was reminded of how, when Christ Jesus healed ten lepers, only one turned back to give glory to God, and I realized I am indeed richly blessed. This helped me recover from the accident.

Mary Baker Eddy writes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (p. 407), "Man's enslavement to the most relentless masters—passion, selfishness, envy, hatred, and revenge—is conquered only by a mighty struggle." Christian Science has taught me to replace hatred with kindness.

Before I was born, both my sisters died. My father's conduct had contributed to their early death. He was an alcoholic and gambled. I was taken away from home when I was five and could go to school. There was great lack. I knew great fear as a baby and, until I was healed in Christian Science, I hated my father. Later I was timid, full of self-pity, and unhappy with other children. After leaving school at twelve I went to an orthodox Protestant church a few months, but nothing helped me permanently.

After a break, I tried a different church, then another and another, always with the same result. I did not seem to hear a sermon that offered a rational explanation or a ray of comfort. When I returned home from the Army at the end of the First World War, I was so full of bitterness and despair I said I would never enter a church again.

However, in the early twenties I visited some Christian Scientists, and when they asked me to attend a testimony meeting in a branch church, I agreed to go just once. The first hymn we sang has stayed with me and helped me many times. It begins (Christian Science Hymnal, No. 224):

The following week I began to regularly attend the church. I borrowed a copy of Science and Health, got a Christian Science Quarterly, found an old King James Bible in the attic, and started to read.

At the time I was working for very small wages and had been refused an increase on the grounds that there were many thousands out of work in my city. I used to dread the dawn of each day. I felt like the Psalmist, who writes (Ps. 130:1), "Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord."

Then I asked a Christian Science practitioner for help. I saw patience and gentleness expressed to a remarkable degree by the practitioner. I told her what I most urgently needed was money, and during the first talks I had with her I only wanted to talk about money. But very early she said to me, "There are people walking about who appear to be dead to all that is worthwhile." This awakened me to watch my thought.

One result of this was that in a Wednesday evening testimony meeting I stopped deciding that one testimony was good and another not very interesting. I tried to be grateful for the good everyone was receiving. As a result my thought became more receptive.

Soon I was healed of smoking. I had not asked for help for this and could see no reason to give it up, but I no longer had the desire to smoke.

An income was established. I obtained a position which I held for thirty-six years. During that time I was only absent twice because of illness.

As mentioned in my earlier published testimony, I have been healed of septic poisoning, a whitlow, and gangrene. I was told I would likely lose the sight of an eye, but this too was healed. My wife was healed when she dropped a pot of boiling stew down her leg and was healed of boils through prayer in Christian Science.

Last year I was knocked down by a van. The driver wanted to take me to hospital, but I asked to be taken home. A Christian Science practitioner treated me, and I was quickly healed.

Had it not been for the work of Christ Jesus, the Way-shower, and of Mrs. Eddy, who gave us the key to the Scriptures, and for the help of a consecrated Christian Science practitioner, I might still be thinking that God neither knows nor cares what happens to me. I feel His presence today.

I am grateful that I have learned that the unhappiness of the past does not relate to my true spiritual nature nor affect my day. I am also grateful for a retirement which is active and useful. I have every reason to thank God I accepted that invitation to attend my first testimony meeting.

Mrs. Eddy writes (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 247), "The little that I have accomplished has all been done through love,—self -forgetful, patient, unfaltering tenderness." What a lesson in humility! These are the qualities that were showered on me, and to this I largely attribute my healing. How could there be room for hatred or anything else unlike good in face of the love that I have been shown in Christian Science. Those who wanted to help me lived up to the words of Mrs. Eddy's poem (Poems, p. 13):

Arthur C. Handley
Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England