Testimony of Healing January 11, 1908 Issue

Two years ago, when we first came into an understanding...

Lillie Hitchings

Two years ago, when we first came into an understanding of what Christian Science is, my mother was suddenly taken very ill. I tried to help her as best I knew how, but by evening she appeared worse and fell into a heavy sleep from which we could not rouse her. We lived in a small town, many miles from a Christian Science practitioner, and we knew the office address of but one Scientist. It was too late in the day, however, to reach him at his office and we tried in vain until twelve that night to get a telephone message to his residence. As all of my efforts in that direction had failed, at midnight I listened to the entreaties of non-Scientist friends, and called in a medical doctor, who pronounced it a case of serious heart trouble with other complications—kidneys, etc. He administered medicine and by the next morning she was restored to a semi-conscious condition. We succeeded in getting a message to the Christian Science practitioner that morning, and he immediately took up the work absently, but wrote me frankly that so long as I relied upon materia medica and Christian Science, I was scattering my forces and could expect little help from the Science. I felt, however, that I could not dismiss the physician. For a week my mother was, as it seemed, between life and death, and I can now see that it was nothing else but the power of Truth which kept her alive. Many times the heart action would seem to stop altogether for a number of seconds.

It seemed to me a great injustice that I should have been placed in such trying circumstances as these, which I felt powerless to rise above. Everything seemed to have conspired against me to make the situation difficult, because a couple of weeks before my mother was taken ill we were visiting in a city where Christian Science help could have been had immediately. If she had been ill while there everything would have been so much easier; but I had been sent away from all help which I desired, and then forced to call a doctor. Yet truly man's extremity is God's opportunity, and I prayed with all my heart to be delivered from the bondage of materiality. One week from the day my mother was taken ill the doctor pronounced her case paralytic trouble. He told me frankly that nothing more could be done, and the following day he said it was useless for him to continue his visits longer, but that if I needed his services to send for him. Suffice it to say that I have never had to send from that day to this. From that moment my mother began to improve, the second day she moved her left hand and foot, was soon able to swallow without difficulty, and in a few days regained consciousness. She had absent treatment and the healing went on gradually. God, in His goodness, then sent me a nurse who, though not at that time a Scientist, yet was open to conviction. She started to read Science and Health and helped me very much, and is now a staunch Scientist.

In one month's time my mother could be drawn about the house in a chair. In two months she could walk a number of blocks. We continued the absent treatment four months, when she was perfectly well. She is now doing as much housework as formerly and never neglects to read daily from Science and Health. When the doctor met her on the street after her recovery he was amazed at the change, for he had said that any one with such heart trouble could not possibly live longer than two months and might pass away any moment. She has since been healed of a severe attack of bowel trouble by absent treatment alone. Christian Science has helped our whole family in many ways. Our little girl has been healed of many ailments,—cold, fever, etc. It has brought financial success as well. My husband has since secured a position which we had hardly dared hope for before taking up the Science, and we have moved to a city where we have all the advantages of Christian Science.

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