Testimony of Healing September 10, 1904 Issue

In view of the bitter experience and long-continued suffering...

W. F. Smith

In view of the bitter experience and long-continued suffering through which I was led to Christian Science, the following statement from Science and Health has special meaning in my case:—

"It is essential to understand, instead of believe, what relates most nearly to the happiness of being. To seek Truth through belief in a human doctrine is not to understand the infinite" (Science and Health, p. 285).

It was the understanding of Christian Science that gave me back my life and my health, after physicians had said I never could be well again. I had suffered for years with a disease that medical authorities call incurable. I went from one physician to another seeking relief from pain that seemed unendurable, but instead of finding relief, I grew gradually worse until I felt that only a few more days were possible to me on earth. In addition to my other physical troubles, my stomach had become a wreck. To kill pain, I resorted to the use of cocaine, and in the few years that I used it the habit grew upon me to such an extent that I could not get enough to satisfy my longings. At the time I came to Christian Science, I was taking from forty to sixty grains a day. I finally became a complete wreck, mentally and physically. For several weeks I had scarcely slept at all and labored under the impression that something terrible was going to happen. I finally began to see bright spots in the sky, and when the final breakdown came, I began to see faces around me. I knew then that I was mentally ruined and that the end had come. A few days before this, Christian Science had been suggested to me by a friend. I rejected it with derision, saying I guessed I was not crazy yet. My only knowledge of Christian Scientists was what I had read against them in the newspapers, and I felt very much as the Jews did toward Jesus. I felt that death was too good for them, and that they ought to have some horrible punishment put upon them. On this night of my final breakdown, I grew as cold as ice. My family in their efforts to do something for me before the doctor, who lived three miles away, arrived, gave me coffee and whiskey. They poured the whiskey in me and on me and rubbed me with it. For the first time in my life I was drunk on whiskey; this, with the cocaine I had taken, produced a wild delirium, then mortal mind resistance was broken down and I decided to turn to Christian Science.

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