Testimony of Healing November 12, 1910 Issue

The Bible tells us that God is Love, yet for forty years I...

Nellie Standart Hobbs

The Bible tells us that God is Love, yet for forty years I had wandered in the wilderness, not realizing this truth. Since my fourteenth year I had been a church-member, but I wanted something more than the services, ritual, and music of that church—something it did not give. I tried one path and then another, seeking that which seemed always beyond my grasp; never satisfied, always heart-hungry, feeling a lack, an aching void, even though when tired of the thorny paths I would rest in some quiet valley of seeming peace, trying to lull myself into content by believing there was nothing beyond that which I possessed.

One after another, my loved ones passed on,—mother, father, sister, husband; then I lost my home and health. The clouds were dark; I could see no light, and my heart rebelled. For four years I had been under medical treatment, and for more than a year I had eaten nothing but the most simple food, and even then had to use medicines. My physicians said the trouble was intestinal, and then that I had gall-stones and another ailment. Then, when I was under examination for these troubles, the doctors discovered that I had a most interesting and unusual malady—aneurism of the abdominal aorta. I then went to Boston and was examined by one of the most renowned surgeons there, who said I must be operated upon at once, to have the gall-bladder and appendix removed; or I could not live. My husband's death had followed a surgical operation; and I said if I felt certain of the result I would consent to an operation, but the thought of the months of invalidism that seemed likely to ensue, made me hesitate. The aneurism was pronounced incurable, and as I had read about the Emmanuel movement I wrote, begging to join one of the classes. I received in reply a kindly and sympathetic letter, which, however, said I must trust myself to my physicians' advice; that in the Emmanuel movement only functional troubles were treated.

I had thought of Christian Science and talked of it, but my friends had no faith in it. In the ten years I had lived in Maine, I had not been among the Christian Scientists, and had heard Mrs. Eddy spoken of only in terms of ridicule. I came to Ohio, and at a time when the aneurism was particularly troublesome, I went to a Christian Science practitioner who had formerly been a trained nurse, and asked her for treatment. She opened my eyes to the truth that God is All, and that He is good. She told me to get "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mrs. Eddy, and to read it every day. The friend who had sent me to this kind lady had talked to me of God as no one had ever spoken to me of Him before; this practitioner used the same language and thought, and my soul was awakened to a great longing for light and understanding. I began to read Science and Health. I had read it many years before, but did not understand it; now, it came to me like manna from heaven, and the Bible which I had read but little for many years became dearer and clearer in this new interpretation. In one week I was a well woman! I was almost scared when I found that the pulsation had ceased,—I could not see it, I could not feel it, it was gone! and all the soreness and pain in the abdomen which for four years had been present, had disappeared.

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