Testimonies of Healing
It is several years since I first turned to Christian Science for physical help, and I am indeed grateful for the understanding gained and the great benefits received through the study of the Bible, together with Mrs. Eddy's book "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.
I did not become interested in Christian Science through any physical healing, but because it appealed to me as a practical, every-day religion. Numerous physical ailments, however, have been overcome, the first being chronic bilious attacks.
I wish to acknowledge and express my gratitude for the benefits that have come to me through Christian Science, having been healed several years ago of four organic troubles which the best physicians in this country and in four countries of Europe had been unable to cure. I had been obliged to lie down a good part of the time, and there was little improvement in my condition.
From early manhood and for a period of twenty-five years I was a victim of the liquor habit in all its various degrees, even to the condition known as delirium tremens. In the latter years of my bondage to this great evil, which had destroyed my opportunities, blasted my hopes, and almost killed my ambitions, I had tried to resist its influence with every conceivable method and system in the human will of man, only to meet with failure and to be cast up again on the rocks of adversity and despair, until I was near the end of human endurance.
It is full time for me to acknowledge the wonderful blessings that have come to me since finding the true understanding of God as revealed through the study and application of the teachings of Science and Health. I was a church-member, had always attended both church and Sunday school, and tried to live up to my beliefs, but when the testing time came there was something wrong either with me or with my religion.
I had been attending First Church of Christ, Scientist, London, for about a year and had enjoyed the services, but had no wish to make a study of Science and Health until the following experience came to me. While preparing to bathe my little girl, then two months old, our three year old boy, who was standing up in his chair beside me, overbalanced.
Although not aware of it at the time, I came to Christian Science for regeneration, and I was reminded of this fact when turning over the leaves of a Bible which was given me many years ago upon leaving England to start life in one of the colonies. The good friends who gave me the Bible had written on the flyleaf a reference to that passage in the 119th psalm which commences, "Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way?" At that time neither the Bible in general nor the quotation in particular greatly appealed to me, and during the succeeding years I indulged in all those alleged pleasures which so generally and so erroneously are supposed to be part and parcel of a young man's make-up.
Several years ago, when Christian Science was first brought to my attention through a friend, I found myself strongly antagonistic, especially toward Mrs. Eddy, although I knew nothing of this religion, in fact had never seen a copy of Science and Health or any of the Christian Science literature, and knew no one who had been healed.
About twelve years ago I received my first Christian Science treatment, which together with five more that followed, healed me of a light yet growing form of paralysis, the result of a serious operation performed the year before. I was grateful to be lifted out of this condition, but at that time was not ready for the teachings of Christian Science and was content to drift with the tide.
The benefits I have received through Christian Science within the last fifteen years have been so many that I must express my gratitude to God for them. The truth that Jesus said would make us free.