Testimony of Healing December 31, 1904 Issue

It is over four years since this blessed truth, Christian Science,...

Helen F. Strickler

It is over four years since this blessed truth, Christian Science, first came to me. From early childhood I had throat trouble. My father was a physician, and everything that could be done in a medical way was done. After my marriage I lived in a city near my old home, where I was treated by three of the best specialists in that city for a number of years, and finally went through the disagreeable operation of having my tonsils removed by electricity. In spite of all this, however, I continued to have quinsy from two to four times a year. Four years ago last Christmas, I was spending the holidays at my father's, and awakened on Christmas morning with one of my usual sore throats. My father examined my throat and said it was an acute attack, and he did not think anything could prevent it from running its usual length of time, which was ten days to two weeks. He prescribed several remedies and the usual poulticing. I was in despair, because we were having a family gathering and I had planned a very happy time.

I knew absolutely nothing about Christian Science, but my sister-in-law, who had recently become interested in the healing, came to my room, and asked me if I would try it, and said she knew it would help me. My husband and I talked it over and decided that we were willing to try anything. A practitioner was called in the afternoon, and soon after she left I rapidly grew worse, and by midnight I was having some difficulty in breathing. I felt that if I ever needed the practitioner it was then, and she was accordingly sent for. This time, however, she was there only a short time before I was fast asleep. At eight o'clock the next morning I awoke to find every particle of pain gone. The healing had been accomplished and I was well.

Strangely enough I did not feel very grateful. I seemed to take it as a matter of course. All the family rejoiced at my healing, but very little was said about Christian Science having done it. My husband and I, however, gave Science the credit, although we had a very limited sense of what it was. We rejoiced that at last we had found something that could check the disease and prevent it from running its usual course, but we did not have the faintest conception that this same truth could also prevent a recurrence of the malady. We began to plan for the next attack, and felt a reasonable degree of security in the thought that we now had a remedy that was efficacious. In just six weeks the expected attack came, and the practitioner was sent for immediately. I told her I would give her just three days to cure me, and felt that was long enough, since she had cured me before in less than a day. In a most tender and loving way she said, "My dear, if I were you I would not limit God." At the end of three days my condition was not improved and we became discouraged, and dismissed the practitioner, and went back to material remedies, with the result that I had one of my usual attacks of quinsy, which nothing in a medical way had ever stopped. After this experience I hardly knew where I stood. I felt that Christian Science had healed me the first time but had failed the next. Just six weeks later, in the same way, and at my father's where I had had the other two attacks, another attack came on; but, thank God, when I awoke this time with a sore throat I also awoke to the fact that I wanted Christian Science and nothing else. In forty-eight hours all sense of pain had disappeared like the dew before the morning sun, and I came to realize what our Master meant when he said, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." Never have I had a return of this trouble, and not one drop of medicine have I taken from that day to this. This is only one of the many blessings I have received through Christian Science.

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