
Testimonies of Healing
Last November my wife was taken ill with a severe liver complaint and suffered terrible pain. Although for quite a while we followed closely the prescriptions of both physicians in attendance, she did not improve, but the pains rather grew worse.
Having successfully tried Christian Science treatment for my little boy, who had a skin disease about eighteen months ago, we concluded to give it as fair a chance when my baby was born in August, 1908. I employed a Christian Science practitioner of this city, but did not engage a doctor at all, believing it unnecessary; and so it proved.
It was in the year 1898 that I first became interested in Christian Science healing, when my daughter wrote me from Missoula that it had helped her to walk, she having been unable to stand on her feet for nearly two years after an operation at the hospital. I did not begin to study it in earnest, however, until three years ago, when I began to have the Lessons and to read Science and Health, which I read through six times.
Having taken a post-graduate course in the school of suffering, both mental and physical, it is with deep gratitude that I give the testimony of my healing in Christian Science. I had always believed in a higher power, but the thought of God filled me with dread.
I wish to express my gratitude for the many benefits I have received through Christian Science. For years I suffered from severe nervous trouble and sleeplessness.
With deepest gratitude for the spiritual awakening that I have experienced through the study and practice of Christian Science, I gladly offer my testimony of healing to such as are honestly seeking to "know the truth" which Jesus declared would make men free. This testimony of healing is to me simply a song of gratitude,—gratitude for the apprehension of the great fact that all healing, whether physical, mental, or moral, is essentially the purification of the human consciousness, the "renewing" of the "mind;" gratitude for the ability to discern between the true and the false; gratitude for the Christ, the power to prove God's omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence; and gratitude for the great example to this age, our valiant Leader, for her purity, courage, fidelity, and wisdom, her glorious demonstration of the divine ever-presence.
Christian Science came to me five years ago, after many years of ill health interspersed with severe attacks of illness. This trouble had been brought on by a fall, which resulted in intense spinal suffering, with death hovering near.
In the fall of 1904 we became acquainted with Christian Science. Its teachings, which were then new to me and which I today recognize as being expressions of Truth severe headaches, and fainting-spells.
I have often been asked, "What brought you to Christian Science?" My reply was, "I once believed that it was misery; now I know it was Love. " Brought up in a home where love and harmony reigned, and where there was always perfect confidence between us,—my father, mother, and myself (my six brothers and two sisters had passed on in infancy),—there was only one prayer in my heart after my father and mother had passed from my sight, and that prayer was for death.
IT is with the deepest sense of gratitude that I give this testimony. In 1892 I was taken very ill, and was confined to my bed for ten months, having many physicians, and every kind of medicine known to the profession, with but very little betterment.