Article August 8, 1908 Issue

To be invited to write a short article on Christian Science...

Mabel S. Thomson—London, England.

The Onlooker

To be invited to write a short article on Christian Science is almost as bewildering an experience as it once was to be asked to a tea-party to tell a number of strangers, who probably are not particularly interested in the subject, "all about it." The days of those tea-parties are fortunately long since gone by, but the same difficulty confronts the present occasion—where to begin, and, more difficult still, where to leave off. Neither problem is easy of solution in dealing with a subject which is infinite, which involves the most sacred experiences of life, and which can necessarily only be touched on very lightly in the columns of a newspaper. But possibly one or two personal reminiscences may serve to interest the readers of The Onlooker, and to indicate the deeper things behind.

I remember distinctly the first time the words "Christian Science" were ever mentioned in my hearing. It was the evening of a glorious summer day, on the banks of the great St. Lawrence River. We had returned from a picnic—a real picnic, not an emasculated imitation with a tablecloth, but a meal cooked over a camp-fire, and eaten with the full understanding that it had to last till next morning's breakfast. Some letters were awaiting our return, and amongst them was one from a girl who had been marvelously healed by Christian Science, recommending one of the friends with whom I was staying, and who had been ill for seven years, to try it, and adding some explanations. This letter was handed to me to read, and my opinion was asked for, and I remember saying with all the colossal conceit of ignorance, "I think the good lady does not know what she is talking about." And yet, in that letter was the information which would have led me to find the key to all the riddles which had perplexed me for years, had I had eyes to see it.

A few weeks after my return to England I heard that my friend, who had been pronounced incurable, in my hearing, by one of the first physicians in London, had been healed by Christian Science. To say that I was astonished is to put it mildly. Here was a cure which could not be doubted, brought about by a method which secretly I had pronounced "the most awful rot." My confidence in my own opinions received its first rude shock. A pamphlet on the subject was then sent to me, and subsequently a copy of Science and Health was lent to me for a few days by a friend who was passing through London. My first impression of the text-book of Christian Science was one of extreme disappointment. When I saw that it was a religious book, recollections of former struggles to get some spiritual nourishment out of works of that type, only to find them stuffed with sawdust, came crowding into my thought with a positive sense of nausea, and so I put it down, feeling sure it had nothing to say to me. Three weeks later I was hunting every book shop in London for a copy of it, for in the interval I had experienced in my own person the wonderful healing power of God, and I knew that in that book I should find the secret.

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