Testimony of Healing October 24, 1908 Issue

For the past two and a half years I have been getting so...

Ella M. Snook

For the past two and a half years I have been getting so much help from the Christian Science literature that I feel it is time to make some small return, which I do with the hope that what I have to tell may help some other as I have been so often helped. Prior to the above-mentioned time I had had personal knowledge of various wonderful healings among my friends, for over a period of twenty years; and it had been suggested to me that I look into this new religion, but I always either flatly refused or based my human opinion on my understanding of a few detached sentences, whereby no light came, but only the endless doubt. When the work of Christian Science was new in the West I attended one church service, but was so little impressed that I gave it up as non-understandable. Having been a church-member for many years, but not finding any satisfaction thereby when in trouble, I changed my belief to liberalism, and from there drifted almost to agnosticism. For years there was no Bible in our home, but I finally got one for the children for appearance' sake.

Being a great reader, and for years kept close at home, I read about many theories, — isms and schisms,—and sometimes one would look like the truth to me for a time, but would finally fade to nothingness. At a time when seeming troubles so weighed on my mind that I slept very little and began to fear insanity, again Christian Science was presented to me. By what I would once have called "chance" but I now know as the call of God, good, I was led to the Christian Science Reading Rooms, where for the first time I met those in the work. I was asked to attend the services, and answered that I would. I had scarcely entered a church of any kind in fifteen years, and then for no right motive, but when the next Sunday came even a pouring rain could not keep me away, for I was curious to see what these people had to offer. The new way of conducting a church service impressed me, but the question came to me, Can I ever stand this Bible reading? I knew, however, I had given other beliefs more than that time to prove their worth, and so I continued to attend until it became a pleasure as well as a duty.

My children are in the Sunday School, and from that time till now God, as understood in Christian Science, has been our only physician. I had been reading Science and Health, by Mrs. Eddy, about a month when I took my first treatment for bowel trouble, and was told that I should also read the Bible. That seemed absurd to me, and I rebelled audibly and declared that I had never been able to get anything out of it. However, in being obedient I found that those who had gone the same road before me could point out the way. I soon learned that the Bible and "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" must go together, and that God is no respecter of persons. I was helped physically and mentally from the first ; I gained fourteen pounds in flesh in a little while, and have had no more stomach or catarrhal trouble, — ailments from which I had suffered since childhood. I have been able to meet error in various forms with constant dependence on God's Word, and it is indeed wonderful what the Bible means to me now.

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