Testimony of Healing April 2, 1904 Issue

Christian Science was brought to my notice about five...

R. Stanhope Easterday

Christian Science was brought to my notice about five years ago by my sister, who urged me to give it a trial. Her loving solicitations were, however, unheeded for months, because I deemed her views fanatical and the Science a system of faith cure. At last, however, when medical skill had been exhausted and hope almost abandoned, I yielded in sheer desperation, and she gave me a few treatments, with the result that I was perfectly healed.

I had suffered from chronic nervous debility all my life, a condition resulting from intense physical suffering in infancy. Two years before my healing, and while a student for the ministry in an Indiana college, I suddenly collapsed, and during that entire time I was a helpless, pitiable wreck. Truly I was without "hope and without God in the world." Medicine had failed and my theology gave me no ray of hope for physical or mental relief, while the meagre chances held out by my church for final victory over besetting sins caused me to shudder for the future. In four weeks after receiving my first treatment I assumed a position of responsibility, and since then have been constantly under intense mental and physical strain without disastrous results. My healing has been tested again and again under circumstances which I never dared think of meeting in the old thought, and its permanency repeatedly proved.

So complete and so gratifying was my healing that I at once began to investigate the Science. And the search during the intervening years has been indeed, to use our Leader's own words, "sweet, calm, and buoyant with hope" (Science and Health, p. 109). A striking contrast, indeed, to the depressing influence and stultifying effect of old beliefs instilled into thought during years of helpless floundering amid the maze of orthodox creeds and doctrines.

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