February 20, 1904
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While
much has been said concerning the financial question as related to Christian Science, I wish to give my individual testimony of benefits received in return for certain sums paid for literature, healing, and instruction.
In
"Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," and in all the other writings of Mrs.
Secular
as well as religious history records innumerable instances where man has asked the question, "What shall I do that I may live?
Several
years since, there appeared in an English periodical, a very striking print of a picture then on exhibition in Europe.
This
one word "inexcusable" has without doubt saved me much suffering since trying to live, think, and act up to my highest understanding of Christian Science.
Healing the sick is not the ultimate aim of Christian Science.
The greater part of a Christian Scientist's practice is with those who have spent the most of their lives, and generally all their cash, in treating with the drug system, and have finally, and as a last resort, turned to Christian Science, with perhaps a faint hope that something might be done to relieve their suffering.
To the Christian Scientist, the proof that the inspired Word is contained in the Scriptures, is the inspiration he is experiencing in his daily life.
I think we shall all agree that the evils of earth, though mountains to mortals, have no weight in the sight of omnipotent God; and it is in this light that Christian Science declares the impotency of evil.
While Christian Science maintains the truth of Jesus' statement, "If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death," and of its Pauline correlative, "The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death," it does not maintain that, according to human experience, there is no death.
At our regular annual meeting in December, 1903, the president's report showed a marked advance during the year.
The
following letter, with enclosure, comes from a Christian Scientist in India.
Article
The author of the Christian Science text-book takes no patients, does not consult on disease, nor read letters referring to these subjects.
From
time to time critics rise to find fault with Christian Science, and especially to demur to the use of the word Christian in connection with it.
Mortal
mind loses no opportunity to discover itself, and one of its latest exhibits has been honored in the press reports by the announcement of "An Exposition of the Characteristics of Consumption.
The
tendency of the human mind to go from one extreme to another proves a lack of the true understanding which never finds a necessity for evil in any direction.
As I sit here to-night, my thought goes back to the time when I was unconscious of peace and happiness, when my sad heart had sunk far below hope or faith in any power that could lift me above the sense of discouragement in life.
It was the hunger and thirst for righteousness, that led me to Christian Science in 1891.
It was not for the actual healing of physical ills that I was first brought to Science; it was rather the power claimed for Christian Science to heal on the Scientific basis of the allness of God and the nothingness of evil, discord, and inharmony that roused my curiosity to know how God had been thus, so to speak, rediscovered amid the mass of dogma and superstition attaching to His holy name.
I wish to acknowledge the benefits I have received from Christian Science.
Before I learned to know Christian Science, I belonged to those people who believe that God sends them sickness, pain, and trouble.
Soon after taking class instruction I was asked by a friend, "If one of your children were seriously ill do you think you would have faith enough in Christian Science to trust to it and not send for a doctor?
It is about fifteen years since I first heard of Christian Science through the healing of a friend who had spinal trouble, but I did not become interested in it until about four years ago.
We are often asked by those out of Christian Science, In case of accident, of what use would Science be?
I first attended a Christian Science meeting last July, and an pleased to say that I have had a most peaceful time since, for I now know that I am God's child.
My servant had suffered for some time from weakness, loss of appetite, and difficulty in breathing.
