Testimony of Healing November 30, 1907 Issue

A year ago last winter I served as First Reader for...

Martha J. Vogell

A year ago last winter I served as First Reader for one month, during a change of Readers in a little church in a New Jersey town. We were spending the winter in New York city. and I was taken with a severe throat trouble, so that on Monday and Tuesday, although I tried to work earnestly, according to the teaching of Christian Science, I was very uncomfortable and found it almost impossible to make myself understood when I tried to speak. On Tuesday night I was unable to go to bed, as I could not breathe lying down. I sat in a chair all night, and during the quiet hours had ample opportunity to think of the allness of God and the consequent unreality of every claim of evil. As day dawned Wednesday the pain was much less, but I was still unable to speak with any comfort, and I thought we would need to send word to our friends in New Jersey to appoint some one else to conduct their meeting that evening. Then came to my thought that wonderful picture of Moses and the children of Israel when the Egyptians had overtaken them at the Red Sea. Hemmed in on either side by impassable hills, the Red Sea before them, and the army of their enemies pursuing them, truly their case looked desperate. But how did it unfold? Moses, with matchless courage and confidence, appealed to God for deliverance, and the response came, "Speak unto the children of Israel that they go forward;" and we know of their glorious deliverance. So it came to me in my seeming suffering and helplessness that I, too, must go forward, trusting in God, our strong Deliverer.

We did not send word to the church, but felt that God was ruling the entire matter, whether I or some one else was to conduct the meeting that night. At noon I went to New Jersey, still seeming no better, and until four o'clock in the afternoon I was not able to speak with any comfort. But about that time the trouble disappeared, vanished into its native nothingness, as our dear Leader says of error, and that evening I led the meeting with a voice so clear and a throat so free that when at the close of the meeting I gave testimony expressing gratitude for my healing, those present were surprised to hear that there had been any such difficulty.

Surely no stranger to Christian Science can grudge the gratitude and love which we feel for dear Mrs. Eddy. as we strive to follow her in so far as she follows Christ (and that is all she asks of us), when they realize that she is helping humanity to-day to know God as Moses knew Him,—"a very present help in trouble."

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