Testimony of Healing April 4, 1908 Issue

It is with a deep and enduring sense of thankfulness...

S. C. Cooper

It is with a deep and enduring sense of thankfulness that I look back to the time of my emancipation from utter darkness and despair to the freedom which came to my mental home when the light and love of Christian Science first opened my blind eyes. I had groped in the darkness of doubt, sickness, sorrow, and affliction until earth seemed a prison-house. The words of comfort given by a kind pastor and loving friends and relatives brought no promise of release, no rest, no hope. They seemed but empty words, for I felt that these friends did not know for a surety the efficacy of God's Word themselves, and therefore they cold not speak with authority. I had never believed in a place of eternal punishment, nor could I believe that God punished His children in anger, for at an early age this teaching had troubled me greatly until I reasoned that if God became angry when people sinned, He must be angry all the time, for sin was being committed continually, in one way or another; therefore He must be angry all the time, and thus could never be Love. I then and there settled it in my own mind that God is always Love, and a sense of peace came to me that was uplifting and satisfying. I did not talk about it to any one, but it comforted me in all my childish troubles. Later in life, when doubts, fears, and despair came, and there seemed no way out of it all but just to suffer and endure, I turned to this God of my childhood, this God who is Love and compassion, calling upon Him to help me, and then decided that I would wait for Him to lead me aright.

This was in March, 1891, and the next September I went East to visit a dear sister who had become a Christian Scientist, and there I found the path that leads onward and upward. Even then I could understand the gospel of "on earth peace, good will to men;" could say, "I know that my redeemer liveth" and that God is good, and in all the years since that time I have just been learning these grand and beautiful truths over and over again. Every experience, "every pang of repentance and suffering" (Science and Health, p. 19), but makes the gospel of peace sink deeper and deeper into human consciousness, until we bid farewell to the suffering sense and live in Love's warmth and Love's comforting light. Through the reading of Science and Health I was healed of a severe and chronic case of throat trouble, also of an affection of the eyelids and failing sight. My child was healed through Christian Science of serious spinal and hip trouble, the latter being healed in one month. The spinal curvature, which dated from his birth, was completely cured in one year's time. This was in 1892, and he is now a tall, strong, healthy young man. The doctors, while he was under their care, had stated that the proper amount of bone tissue was lacking, and they admitted that medicine could never supply it, thus giving me no hope of his recovery.

My desire is to reflect the Christly or Godlike nature to such an extent that those who are hungering and thirsting for a closer walk with God may find only blessing at my door. My thankfulness to the great giver of all good is very great, and my gratitude to the dear Leader who has so truly shown us by her life how to return "blessing for cursing," can only be shown by doing likewise.—Mrs. S. C. Cooper, Pomona, Cal.

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