Testimony of Healing September 5, 1908 Issue

When I came to Christian Science I was nervous and...

Julia Benton

When I came to Christian Science I was nervous and wretched after a long and tedious illness. I remember asking the doctor when I would get over it,—when I would wake up without the feeling that something dreadful had happened or was going to happen,—and he smiled and said, "What you want is to be a child again; no one over twenty wakes up very buoyant or happy." I carried this same trouble to the Christian Science practitioner, and though she smiled too, her smile was somehow different—it reminded me that joy is second on the list of the fruits of the Spirit. Henry Van Dyke says to be "afraid of nothing but cowardice;" but I was afraid of everything, and though I had heard again and again that "Christian Science is all right for nervousness, but would not do for anything serious," in my experience it was the serious things which melted away first.

I was helped almost at once with the physical troubles I had, one of these being a stiffness and aching in my fingers from several attacks of rheumatic trouble, which had been the cause of a great deal of pain and annoyance and which the doctor had said that I would always have. Nevertheless, this has almost entirely left me, and whereas formerly I was a slave to climate and food, detesting and fearing the damp and spending one winter in California and another in Italy, without daring to eat an orange because the doctor had said it was bad for me, now I eat anything and go out in all sorts of weather and am better than I ever was in my life,—so much better that one of my friends said to me the other day, "What makes you look so well; is it Christian Science?"

It certainly is Christian Science, and though there are sometimes sly "little foxes" at the vines, when I look at the milestones passed instead of the ones ahead, I am most grateful for this teaching and for the loving patience that has never failed me.

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