Article November 30, 1899 Issue

Many Blessings Received

By Frances B. Johnston

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE has healed me of many ailments — colds, coughs, rheumatism, ear-ache, tooth-ache, heart-ache, grip, deafness, the effects of the grip, and other ills too numerous to mention. It has almost restored my eyesight. I could not read a word without my glasses, and I can now read the Bible and Science and Health with perfect ease without them. Christian Science is the greatest boon that was ever brought to mankind.

It is about fourteen years since Christian Science was first brought to my notice. I never antagonized it, but wanted to know what it was from the first; however, the desire was not sufficient to make me search for it. I needed it then, as the entire world needs it to-day, but it was not until five or six years later that I really accepted it. I was then (to mortal sense) sick in body and in mind. Life had become a blank to me as it would be to-day without this Science. I seemed to be "without hope and without God in the world," although I had been a church member for many years. In that condition I made a business trip to St. Louis and stopped with an old friend who was under Christian Science treatment, and both she and her husband could talk of nothing else. They were full to overflowing of this blessed Truth, and I caught the overflow. I listened and was ready to obey. I was told to deny the material senses, and to declare the allness of God. I arrived in St. Louis in the evening after a very uncomfortable day on the cars, having been so ill all day that I could not hold my head up. The following afternoon my friend gave me the Bible and Science and Health, and asked me to read aloud to her. I do not know why we turned to the chapter on Genesis in Science and Health, but we did; and as I read, making my comparisons with the Bible, the spiritual creation dawned upon me and I exclaimed again and again, "I never saw it in that way before." As I continued to read, I became so interested and so absorbed in the books before me, that I forgot everything else. I read the entire afternoon and evening, and the next morning I arose without a pain or an ache, and as free and as happy as a bird on the wing. In fact I did not tread upon terra firma, but seemed to float in mid-air. The business upon which I had gone to St. Louis was accomplished in half the time I had expected, and without the least fatigue. Then I hastened to herald "the glad tidings of great joy," but alas! I soon found that I had much to learn, for this good news failed to meet the hearty reception which I had expected. Opposition met me at every turn, and the greatest opposition in my own family. A copy of Science and Health was given to me and I read it once, but did not make a study of it. For about three and a half years I was able to demonstrate the healing power of Christian Science to a certain extent; but when the real test came my understanding was too limited to meet the opposing thought. I had been called a "crank" on the subject of Christian Science so many times, that I began to think perhaps I was one, and that I would give medicine a trial once more.

For about a year, I swung like a pendulum between materia medica and Christian Science, growing worse all the time. Finally I remembered what Christian Science had done for me, and I decided, like the Prodigal, to return to my Father's house. Shortly after that decision, when endeavoring to help a suffering friend, the Christian Scientists heard of me and came and invited me to attend their meetings. I went and was pleased with the people I saw there. That was nearly five years ago, and I have been with them ever since.

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