Article June 12, 1915 Issue

Testimonies

GERTRUDE SANDS SHERIDAN

I want to send a word of gratitude for the testimonies published in the Journal and the Sentinel. The first stage of interest and joy in Christian Science is entered by many people as the result of physical healing through the power of Truth. Glad wonder at deliverance from disease, also from the so-called laws of health with their penalties and limitations, outshines all else in the consciousness of the new student. During this period testimonies of healing through Christian Science are eagerly listened to and read. Later, however, the healing becomes a part of daily experience and is rightly taken as a matter of course. Then comes a time when the "Testimonies from the Field" are regarded, more or less unconsciously, perhaps, as representing a department for beginners, or for those who "think of looking into Christian Science."

Such has been my own attitude, but of late I have received great help and inspiration from these testimonies. Often light has been shed for me on some problem of the moment by coming upon the working out of a similar problem and of the specific thought-processes which solved it. Once or twice when discouragement has seemed to overwhelm me, release has come in a twinkling through the reading of a single testimony; and with it a glorious new courage, a surer consciousness of joy, and an all-pervading sense of gratitude.

I have also found that the need of so-called chance inquirers has been more fully met by my ability to answer their queries in regard to the healing of specific cases of disease and to refer them to this or that recent issue of our periodicals. I recall a testimony in the Sentinel which told of a healing of malignant disease at what was virtually the hour of death. The writer stated that the road to health was long and slowly traversed, but that from the first she and those who helped her rejoiced. She said, too, that she was helped by remembering that Jesus on several occasions thanked the Father before he declared the truth for the sufferer. The reading of this testimony, and others expressing similar thoughts, has taught me much about being grateful. Sometimes when personal sense has affirmed discord for me, it has been quickly dispelled by a larger, more universal sense of gratitude.

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