Testimony of Healing February 17, 1906 Issue

Although I did not come to Christian Science for physical...

John Scott

Although I did not come to Christian Science for physical healing, I have benefited so much in health, and in other ways, since entering on this wonderful new life, that I would be ungrateful indeed if I did not express my thankfulness for it. By means which would be deemed miraculous without some understanding of Christian Science, I have been enabled to cast off many physical bonds and infirmities, which, under the old thoughts, were year by year getting me more firmly in the toils; and though now a good few years over the half century, I find myself not only enjoying a full renewal of health, but in a measure quite rejuvenated, having gained "the freer step" and "the fuller breath" which are characteristic of the true sense of Life.

At the time I first heard of Christian Science I did not count myself an invalid, except on occasions; but I know now that I was, to sense, the veriest slave to many infirmities, and that every year was adding to my thraldom. Bronchitis, lumbago, rheumatism, each claimed me as its victim, and so frequently that I was seldom without one or another of them; while other infirmities, such as failing eye-sight and getting out of breath on the least exertion, were daily becoming more and more troublesome. In this miserable state I lived, and was content in a way, flattering myself with the delusion that all these ailments were dispensations of Providence, and that, as such, it became me to bear them with resignation, and even with cheerfulness.

As children we have all, no doubt, had many a merry laugh at our sailor friend Sinbad, with the old man of the sea on his back; and in graver moods, when reading Bunyan's famous allegory, we may have wept over poor Christian, trudging on his way to the heavenly Jerusalem with that big pack of sins on his shoulders; yet deluded mortal man, with a load of physical infirmities burdening him, is a far more laughable object than Sinbad, and far more to be pitied than poor Christian. That is how my former infirmities now appear to me. Aforetime they seemed to be very real indeed, but on the day that I first heard of Christian Science the scales began to fall from my eyes. In the light of the truth which had dawned on me, all my ailments and infirmities began to disappear, one by one. Even bronchitis, which had seemingly held me in its grasp for twentythree years, has now lost its power over me, although not without a struggle on my part. In that Armageddon, as I may call it, victory for a time seemed to incline to the enemy, until a kind friend came to my rescue. As before the attack I had been fearing it would come, I was not holding the right thought to resist it when it did come; and in the struggle which ensued my resistance was weakened by a feeling that there was error somewhere in my handling of my own case. My kind helper at once showed me where I had been at fault—first in looking for an attack of bronchitis as something dependent on weather conditions, and secondly in thinking to destroy it by declaring only a part of the truth; because, if God is All in all, as every professing Christian is ready to declare, then bronchitis has no reality, and its false claims are already destroyed, the work having been done by omnipotence from the beginning. Under the unerring searchlight thus brought to bear on it, the evil called bronchitis simply faded away, showing that it had no existence except in mortal mind.

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