Testimony of Healing September 26, 1908 Issue

As a child, without Christian training, without schooling...

James F. Evans

As a child, without Christian training, without schooling beyond the art of reading and writing crudely, I was forced to face the world and live by my own efforts. Naturally sensitive, and inclined to be resentful under what I considered harsh treatment, my boyhood years were ever inharmonious and ofttimes turbulent; so, when scarcely more than a boy, I became as a piece of driftwood on the seething sea of mortal life, with nothing better to guide me than a heart full of half-formed and evil-bent desires. Thus passed the period of nearly twenty years of a wild, reckless, vagabond existence, an existence hardly above that of the untamed creatures which make their homes in the rocky caverns of the hills; but, in a manner too long to tell, I awoke to the fact that I was dead,—dead to all that was noble, pure, and good; that my years had been squandered; that I had given nothing to the world, but had demanded many things from it.

Health had departed—the result of a wrong life, as I have since learned. Without companions, and with spirits broken, I was alone utterly, for of God's ever-presence I then knew nothing. Do any know what it means to be alone, unloved and unloving, and without a knowledge of God? Well, may they never know! Again a few sad years went by, years of misdirected endeavor to find some foundation more substantial than shifting sand to build my house of hopes upon, both as regarded my bodily health and the truth of a higher life. After faithfully trying almost every remedy known to materia medica, after conscientiously studying and practising all sorts of human philosophy, I found myself faithless that any medicine could cure me, or that it could be demonstrably proven that there is such a thing as truth, or anything sure but the grave. This was my extremity. It appears, however, that when this hour of darkness arrives for us, a great light is fast approaching, and it so proved in my case.

A noble-hearted woman saw my need, and loaned me a copy of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mrs. Eddy. I read it through carefully and without prejudice, but with a growing fear that it would not stand the test of trial. I, however, started to read it through again, trying to apply its teachings as best I could, and when about half way through its pages the second time I suddenly realized that I was healed of my worst complaint, a terrible bowel, stomach, and liver trouble which had punished me for many years. Much I marveled, and kept on studying. Soon, before the ever-increasing brightness which shone from that wonderful book, my sorrows one by one seemed to take wings and flit away into the realm of nowhere, undoubtedly where they properly belong. They might possibly be likened to those weird creatures that zigzag through the summer nights but hide away when comes the morning sun. All bitterness toward the world is gone. I have acquired brighter ideals, a new sense of Life, a purer plane of thought; but to tell all the good that has come to me and mine, all the claims of error that have been met and mastered since we began the study of our text-book, would make a very long story indeed. I may, however, add this, that no longer sails my weary bark on alien seas, at the mercy of every diverse wind of so-called philosophy; it is anchored in the haven of Christian Science! True, there are many errors yet to be overcome, but I cannot be discouraged for long when I contemplate this fact, for is not God solving these problems for me? And if He is for me, how can I fail? And am I thankful for the manifold blessings received? Truly I am.

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