Testimony of Healing August 6, 1904 Issue

It is four years in January since we became interested in...

M. L. B.

It is four years in January since we became interested in Christian Science, when we turned to it for healing. This was not an easy thing to do. Being a physician's daughter I had been taught to believe that nothing but medicine could heal sickness. Then I was devoted to an orthodox church. I joined the church at the age of twelve and became a teacher in the Sunday School at seventeen. I thought I was satisfied with the religion I professed, but what was I to do? I seemed to be facing death. For six years I had suffered terrible pain from an enlargement on the back of my neck, and for three years with appendicitis. After having been treated for years by the best physicians in the cities where we lived, we had consulted eminent specialists. We were told by two of them it was a tumor; another said he did not know and advised us to see the leading spinal specialist of this country. We did so and he called it tuberculosis of the spine, and said I would have to be in bed for about three months, strapped to the bed to let the spine heal. All agreed that the operation for appendicitis should not be delayed any longer. I had become very much discouraged, the pain was so intense that I was willing for anything, even an operation if I could only get a little relief from suffering.

Three weeks before the time set for the operation a Scientist asked my husband if he would not have me try Christian Science those intervening weeks. My husband knew I feared I would die in the operation and he was glad for anything that might postpone it. I was prejudiced against what I thought was Christian Science, and only tried it to please him. When I told the practitioner that I had no thought of giving up my church and was prejudiced against Christian Science, she kindly replied that people who were prejudiced had been healed, that Christian Scientists did no proselyting, and if I would remain she would be glad to treat me. I had never seen the book Science and Health, and I spent the half hour I was there reading the first page of the Preface.

The first treatment relieved the intense pain in the neck and spine. At the end of the first week I was surprised to find I could not use my glasses, which I had worn for reading and sewing for four years. At the end of the second week the soreness in my side and appendix had disappeared, also the pain in my left limb which I supposed was incurable as it was a weakness caused by childbirth. The result of these two weeks' treatment, together with my interest in Science and Health (for I was reading from six to eight hours a day), encouraged me so much that I asked my husband if I were entirely healed if we would become Christian Scientists. He said, "That remark makes me heart-sick." That evening he said he wished to see my practitioner, and went to take a treatment for dyspepsia, that he might see for himself what had changed me so, for he thought it was hypnotism. He was so uplifted and benefited in that treatment that for the next two weeks he went every evening and I went every morning. We were both entirely healed, but what were we to do now? We were healed, we were happy, but we had lost orthodoxy and did not have Christian Science. We early sought class instruction, and here learned that we had found the truth we had been working for all these years, and knew we were satisfied.

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