Testimony of Healing December 21, 1907 Issue

We are told in the Bible, "Be ready always to give an...

C. H. Jones

We are told in the Bible, "Be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you," and I shall endeavor to do this with a view to helping some one who may be, as I was for so many years, almost destitute of hope. Especially does my heart go out to those honest physicians who are seeking the truth and who are sure to find it in Christian Science if they "study thorougly the letter and imbibe the spirit" (Science and Health, p.495). I had been a member of an orthodox church for many years, most of the time an official. I tried, as best I knew how, to be faithful to my beliefs, but if I had been asked if I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that I was God's child, I could only have replied, "I hope so, but do not know," I had but a faint conception of God's real nature and man's relation to Him. I believed fully that "in Adam's fall we sinned all," and that all my troubles were due to my misfortune in being descended from him, though I could not understand how a just God could hold me responsible for another's sin. I thought God had made man, and then cast adrift upon life's sea with the command to work out his own salvation, and that this salvation depended largely upon living up to some particular orthodox, man-made creed, and this I honestly endeavored to do. In a word, I was content to let my preacher do my thinking, supposing that he alone could correctly interpret the Scriptures. It is true this course failed to bring the joy, peace, and happiness I felt I was entitled to, but I thought we had to wait until death should bring deliverance by translating us to a place called heaven. I did not then know that the kingdom of heaven was within, and could be found here and now.

Six years ago came the darkest shadow that had ever fallen across my pathway, and to sense shut out all hope. My dear wife had been a sufferer for thirty years with various troubles, which culminated in a nervous ailment that made her a confirmed invalid. I myself was a physician, and had exhausted the resources of materia medicafor her, she finding no relief. I was thoroughly immersed in the slough of pessimism, knowing not in what direction to turn for help, "man's extremity is God's opporutnity." Suffering at last drove her, like a tired child, "to the arms of divine Love" (Science and Health, p. 322), as our dear Leader says it often does, and through Christian Science she found health, happiness, joy, peace, perfect harmony, which are man's birthright by divine inheritance. When she returned home from Chicago, and told me she had been healed through Christian Science (I did not know of her having been treated), strange to say, while I rejoiced that she was well, I rebelled at the thought of Christian Science being the means, and would not let her mention the subject for two years; but at the end of that time, like the prodigal, I came to myself and began to reason.

My thoughts were about these: Here I am fighting Christian Science, while knowing absolutely nothing about it, This is neither sensible, just, nor honest. There is no denying the fact that it has not only cured my wife physically, but that she has no cares, no burdens. She is happier than I ever before saw her, more spiritual; in a word, she is transformed, and it must be through the "renewing" of the mind. Desiring to secure for myself this optimistic state. I decided that if Christian Science could do this for her there was no reason why I could find it; that I would lay aside all prejudice, which I knew was only the child of ignorance, all preconceived opinions, and make an honest investigation, not taking the opinion of any one, but studying for myself the text-book, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mrs. Eddy. If Christian Science was true, I wanted it; if not, I would reject it.

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