I wish to express my gratitude to God, who gave us Christ Jesus, and for Mary Baker Eddy, who through her unselfish devotion made provision for our growth Spiritward. I had class instruction from a devoted student of Christian Science. In the last forty years I have missed only three of the annual association meetings, and it is necessary for me to travel over two thousand miles each way.
My years of teaching in the Sunday School have brought me so much joy that I do not have the words to express my appreciation for this privilege. I remember how happy I myself was to attend the Christian Science Sunday School as a pupil after Mrs. Eddy changed the age limit from sixteen to twenty. The truths I learned there have remained fresh in my memory, and I use them over and over.
The lectures, provided for by Mrs. Eddy, besides bringing the truth to strangers, fill a great need for the students of Christian Science. It was at a lecture that a great truth was given to me by the lecturer before the formal lecture. I would like to relate this experience.
I had suffered multiple injuries in an automobile accident, but because I wanted to rely solely upon Christian Science treatment for my healing, I was released from the hospital where I had been taken. A doctor friend of the family, who knew I was a student of Christian Science, helped to arrange for my release. When he saw X rays that had been taken he said I would have to be flat on my back for a long time.
A Christian Science practitioner gave me treatment, and a Christian Science nurse was engaged to care for me in my home. Although the X rays were said to show a discouraging picture, the practitioner told me that God knew nothing of material means of identifying His ideas. She assured me that I was a spiritual child of God.
My husband had passed on at the scene of the accident. When I was told this, I was given prayerful support and gradually was healed of the great sense of loss. The practitioner kept reminding me that I must not let discouragement enter my thought, that God had need of me, and that my two daughters had need of me as well. She helped me know that I could never be separated from good, and through the continued prayerful work my thought was lifted above discouragement. The awareness of God's nearness and that He is my provider, husband, companion, unfolded to me in the following weeks with the practitioner's clear help.
A passage from Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy was given me to ponder, for I was unable to move for about six weeks. It refers to being obedient to a patient God. "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" (p. 242). Not only was I helped, but my daughters also received the sustaining support they needed to take care of the many problems that the accident had presented.
After six weeks I still could not move myself, but the nurse got me up into a chair each day. We studied the Lesson-Sermon from the Christian Science Quarterly and sang hymns, and each day I was very grateful for this opportunity. At this time I learned that a lecture was to be given at our church, and the practitioner urged me to make the effort to attend. Strengthened by God's sustaining power, I was dressed and taken to the church and carried in and placed near the door going into the organ pit. The young man who brought the lecturer to church had to pass by my chair, and he graciously stopped and introduced the lecturer to me, who immediately said, "God knows nothing at all about an accident," and requested me to keep that thought during the lecture. Many truths in the lecture seemed to be just for me, and I drank them in with much gratitude and love. The lecturer stopped by my chair on the way out and reaffirmed the statement that God knew nothing about this seeming accident.
I was carried home again, and I asked to be placed by the stair door and to be left there alone with God. In a few minutes I found I could stand. Then I began to climb the stairs, constantly declaring that God knew nothing about accidents. The first step was difficult, but I never faltered in my climb up those stairs. I reached the top and walked to my bed. I lay down for a moment and got up again, something I had not been able to do before. When the nurse and my family came into the room, I told her she could go home in the morning because I was completely healed.
The next Sunday I was in church, grateful to God and very happy to be free. In a remarkably short time no scars were present.
Christian Science was relied upon exclusively during this experience; in fact, it has been my only help since 1907.
Los Angeles, California
