Testimony of Healing October 26, 1907 Issue

A song of gladness and thanksgiving continually fills...

Louise Smith Glanville

A song of gladness and thanksgiving continually fills my heart at the remembrance of the day and hour when God gave me a sign, absolute and convincing, that Christian Science is a religion not merely beautiful in theory, as I had previously believed, but true and practical. This sign was the almost instantaneous healing of my mother from an illness that had baffled the skill of physicians for many months, through her reading of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mrs. Eddy. I would not if I could, and could not if I would, picture the depths of despair, the hours of bitter anguish, the utter hopelessness that darkened my life in the gloomy days preceding the deliverance of my loved mother; but deliverance was close at hand. My mother turned to the "little book," and in that very hour it was plain to be seen that health was making itself manifest; in a few days she was perfectly well. The miracle had been wrought, and I knew that the power behind it was divine! Thus was I led to find out the workings of Truth for myself, and my study of Christian Science was begun.

Little did I then realize that I stood upon the threshold of heaven itself, where I was to see the glories which God "hath prepared for them that love him." I studied some time each day in Science and Health, but with housework and the preparing of a difficult program of pianoforte music for my graduation recital to take place in the following spring, etc., I found little time, comparatively, for the one study which I should later find to be the only one really worth while. I read through Science and Health, studying it carefully, committing many passages to memory, and trying to make it conform to my material mode of thinking. On this basis (the only one I knew of at that time) I thought its statements many times contradictory and I received little benefit, but still I was firm in the faith that its teaching was true, for I had seen it proven.

By this time I felt a desire for the companionship of those who believed the teachings of Christian Science, and I soon became acquainted with two Christian Scientists, one of whom lent me "Miscellaneous Writings" by our Leader. There, in the article "Science and the Senses," lay my salvation, my freedom from the beliefs that had bound me. I had been made ready for the light, and it burst, dazzling in its purity, upon my enraptured vision—a revelation from God. Truth had rent the veil of material sense and I stood in the kingdom, knowing Spirit, God, alone as our Father and myself as His spiritual child. I seemed to be separated from the flesh. I had been born again, for I was conscious of man's true being. This is why I can say to people who wonder at my faith in a doctrine which treats of a spiritual universe here and now, in the face of opposing material evidence, that I know it is true, for spiritual sense has revealed it to me. I know whereof I speak.

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