Testimony of Healing November 21, 1908 Issue

It is now about a year since I first went to a Christian Science...

Perley Bryant Davis

It is now about a year since I first went to a Christian Science practitioner. Mrs. Eddy has said that "Mind measures time according to the good that is unfolded" (Science and Health, p. 584), and from that standpoint this year has been a taste of eternity. I had read Science and Health the year before, in connection with some reading on psychical phenomena, but I had been strangely repelled by it. A good many months passed before I thought of Christian Science again, when a friend, whose truth and sincerity I entirely trusted, told me of a remarkable cure, through Christian Science, in her own family. I was wretchedly ill myself at the time, rather more so than usual. My physical troubles were many and varied. I had a structural difficulty of the eyes, a throat trouble which two specialists had failed to relieve, and a serious organic disorder which had caused me to undergo two operations and many different forms of treatment. Occasionally I was helped for a time, but always the painful conditions returned, and with them endless suffering. My last doctor told me he feared I could never be really well, and he advised still another operation. I had decided definitely, after my last hospital experience, never to take ether again; it had twice revealed to me depths of horror and fear which no merely physical physical pain could equal. It was useless for me to go to doctors, since I did not intend to follow the only advice they thought it right to give, yet I needed help badly, and if there was any way out of the circle of pain, in which it seemed my very life was being absorbed, I wanted to find it.

I went to a Christian Science practitioner because I longed to be freed from the bondage of suffering, the sense of physical burden and misery, but I promised myself I would not yield to any influence which interfered with that search for the truth to which I hoped to keep steadfast. I shall never forget the exquisite courtesy and tact with which the practitioner received me. Later I realized the great privilege of that close contact with a character rich in purity and truth. I went every day for treatment during the following week, and it was not long before I received definite proof of the ability of Christian Science to overcome pain, and almost at once I was filled with a vital sense of life and power. First one form of trouble, then another, was met and destroyed during the week that followed. Now I am conscious of that scientific "sense of health" (Science and Health, p. 69) which Mrs. Eddy promises to those who earnestly seek the truth.

All life, I think, consciously or unconsciously is a quest for the truth. I used to believe that if I kept my desire for it pure and strong, somewhere I should find the answer. I have found it in Christian Science, and with it has come an absolute freedom and an expansion of thought undreamed of on that other plane. Mrs. Eddy has brought her vision down, has expressed the living truth so that any quickened spiritual sense can perceive it. It was a task so great that we tremble to think of it, a victory so entire that her followers are filled with ever-deepening gratitude and love. I have found Christian Science a religion at once practical and ideal, and for the health and happiness and peace it has brought into my life, I give my testimony with all my heart.

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