Testimony of Healing May 18, 1907 Issue

I have often felt a desire to tell the Field of the proofs...

Julia E. Richmond

I have often felt a desire to tell the Field of the proofs I have had during the past seven years of God's willingness and power to help in every time of need, but they have been so many and so wonderful that I have not known where to begin, for time and space would not permit me to tell all. I was in delicate health from childhood, being a constant sufferer from spinal trouble, supposedly caused by a fall. Until I was eighteen there were very few months which were not spent partly in bed, under the doctor's care, or taking medicine of some kind. At the age of eighteen I was cured of the spinal trouble through faith and prayer. This one devil was driven out and the house swept and garnished; but not being filled with the understanding which makes and keeps us free, there came in many other evils, worse than the first, and during the next twelve years I suffered more than ever before.

For many weeks at a time I suffered greatly from complicated conditions, and on one occasion a doctor kept me under the influence of morphine for ten weeks, saying it was all that could be done for me. For seventeen weeks at another time I was not able to stand on my feet, but through it all I constantly held to the one ray of light I had had, that God is able to heal. It seemed that every attack of illness left me in a worse condition than it found me, until I began to feel that it would soon end my life, and I sometimes hoped it might do so. I would not bring back to memory all those might of suffering but to contrast them with the seven years of freedom I have enjoyed since I began reading "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mrs. Eddy.

In the spring of 1898 my sister, who had been a great sufferer from kidney and bladder trouble for four years, was healed by Christian Science in a very few weeks. She bought a copy of Science and Health and of "Miscellaneous Writings" by Mrs. Eddy, and offered to lend me Science and Health while she read the other. Having been brought up by Christian parents, I had always been taught that God was a prayer-hearing and prayer-answering God, and I was hungering and thirsting for more understanding of the power of God that saves to the uttermost. I had read only a few pages of Science and Health when I discovered that it contained a revelation of "God with us" such as I had never known of before. Oh, how eagerly I read it! I forgot self and all my surroundings. I read every moment I could get, night and day. At that time we were living at Attica, N. Y., and as I knew nothing of any other literature on Christian Science, I read and reread Science and Health, and it was nearly a year before I even saw a Christian Scientist or had any help excepting from the book. After a few months I began to notice how strong and well I felt, and when I remembered how long it had been since I had had a sick spell I was astonished. I have not spent one day in bed since.—nearly seven years and a half. With a desire to "prove all things," and "hold fast that which is good," I read some other books and papers on mental healing, but I soon found that I could not continue this kind of reading and follow the admonition of the last part of the verse. I found that Mrs. Eddy's teaching contained the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and I felt that I did not want to partake of the knowledge of good and evil, so I have confined my religious reading entirely to the Bible and the works of our Leader.

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