Testimony of Healing December 31, 1910 Issue

When Christian Science was first proposed to me as a...

A. L. Kanagy with contributions from Gertrude M. Kanagy, Clayton I. Kanagy

When Christian Science was first proposed to me as a healing agency for my wife's illness, it provoked and angered me as would a direct personal insult. My sister's reference to Science was prompted by conditions in my family which she saw needed the regenerating influence of Truth, and while I readily admitted that her own health had been restored, yet I could not and would not permit her to discuss the subject in my presence.

Brought up on strict lines of orthodoxy,—my father being a clergyman,—I had emerged into life's activities with an absolute hatred for everything religious, the result of being forced throughout my boyhood, up to my majority, to accept things religious. I was nursing this mentality when my sister proposed Christian Science to me, and my antagonism was at once aflame, while my vocabulary of profanity was released in emphasizing my condemnation of something I knew nothing about. Soon after this, however, I consented, in pity for my wife's suffering, to have her take treatment, and assisted her to the home of a practitioner. After the first treatment she showed rapid improvement, and my opposition gradually gave way to toleration, as I had soon to admit that, wherein drugs for nearly two years had failed to benefit her, Christian Science was fast restoring her to her former self. At the end of thirteen treatments she was healed—well!

Since this healing—over eight years ago—myself, wife, and son have relied entirely on Truth in all our troubles, physical and otherwise. I learned that our progress is in proportion to honest endeavor, and my ambition is to grow and let this knowledge develop into understanding. As I let go of material dependences, I found progress in health and greater insight, but I could not let go of all belief in material remedies at once. Fear held me, and only as I gained a little more would I let go of something from a fairly complete medicine chest; but after a year or two every material remedy had been thrown away, including prescriptions that formerly were believed to be indispensable to my supposed needs, except one little bottle of pills. Material belief queried what I would do if I should need them; so I let them remain for perhaps a year, then out they went, and I have never had need of them in the eight years since then.

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