Testimony of Healing September 5, 1908 Issue

I did not come to Christian Science for the physical healing...

Antoinette W. Stephens

I did not come to Christian Science for the physical healing, although I was anything but a strong woman at the time; it was from mental unrest—a feeling of stagnation—an intense longing to know more of God. I had been a working church member since childhood. but I found as time went on that I knew no more about God than I did thirty years before, and understood no better about man and all the sorrows and mysteries that seemed to surround him. I could not understand why an omnipotent, all-loving Father should make His children with such imperfect bodies and senses that while they had them they could not see Him,—why He made them subject to sickness and death. If it was God's will that people should be sick and die, why, I questioned, did Jesus go contrary to God's plan and heal their diseases and raise them from the dead, and say he was fulfilling God's will.

I had been taught that we must be resigned to God's will,—wait patiently until we died and reached heaven, when all these things would be made clear to us; but I could not see that the Bible taught this. Jesus said that to know God is eternal life. He did not say that we had to die to know God, but that if we knew Him we should never die. It seemed strange that in the midst of so many wonderful material discoveries so little should be known of God and of man,—His highest creation,—and that the science of man's being should remain such a mystery. I was prejudiced against Christian Science, but when finally I was led to read Science and Health I found in it an answer to the above questions and to many others that had been puzzling me. I found that the revelations of Christ Jesus, spiritually interpreted, appealed to me as the most consistent theory of God and man that I had ever heard. Although the Bible meant so much more to me, now that I had a "Key" to unlock its mysteries, still I clung to the Church of my youth, which I loved very dearly, hoping to remain where I was and also to enjoy the blessings that come from Christian Science. But how could I, when the Church taught directly or indirectly the reality of evil and that God used it, or permitted it, to perfect His creation? The blessings of Christian Science come from knowing that God is All and that evil is not real.

For months and months I was on the rack. No one knows the struggle unless he has been through it. I was beset on all sides by doubts and misgivings in my own mind, and with arguments in every conceivable form from my loved ones. For me the question must be settled once and for all. Had Mrs. Eddy rediscovered the truth? The first thing to do was to find out exactly what Christian Science teaches, and the only thorough way to do this was to study Science and Health, attend the church services, and put what I learned to the test in every sickness or trouble that came to me. I did not have to wait long, as shortly afterward I was taken with a severe attack of illness. After a practitioner had worked for me a short time, the thought suddenly came to me, If there is no sickness and this is only a false belief, why am I lying here? I immediately arose and went into the adjoining room. When the children came in they were surprised to find me so much improved. The next morning my first thought was that perhaps I might sit up half that day and longer the following day; when I suddenly realized that I did not have to convalesce from a false belief, and soon I was attending to all my household duties as usual. Some six months later, I had a severe attack of throat trouble, from which I had suffered under materia medica. This time a Christian Science practitioner came to see me, and the healing was most rapid. I regained my strength almost immediately, whereas under medical treatment I had been three weeks reaching my normal condition. I learned later how this was accomplished. Mrs. Eddy says, "God pours the riches of His love into the understanding and affections, giving us strength according to our day" (Science and Health, p. 5). I continued to read the text-book, and gradually overcame chronic liver trouble. The attacks had been so severe for two successive springs that the physician feared a fever would be the result. I began to see that the cause of the disease was mental, and if worry or other discordant thoughts had produced a pain in my side, what good could a plaster do? If I wished to be healed I must change my thoughts; as St. Paul tells us, our bodies are transformed by the renewing of our minds.

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