Testimony of Healing August 27, 1910 Issue

I wish to give this testimony of healing to the readers of...

Mary M. Sage

I wish to give this testimony of healing to the readers of the Christian Science Sentinel, because if I did not, I should lose my own respect, and be placed in the category of the nine lepers who never returned to give God the glory. I have been a lifelong Bible student, a truth-seeker, and as I look back, from my present standpoint, through the long vista of years, I can now see, as I never saw before, the leading hand of God in all my researches. If years ago I had recognized the source, and paid heed to the message, it would have been better. I was born and raised in the orthodox faith; my father, grandfather, besides uncles and cousins, were clergymen. It was a current remark that our family took to theology, just as a duck takes to water. I, however, proved an exception to that rule, and was considered wilfully obstinate. Seventy years ago sectarianism was rife in our land. Different religious denominations were at swords-points over their creeds, and hurled the dirk of defamation at each other with the greatest dexterity. Such was my early environment. Before I was eighteen eyars of age I was married to a member of my father's church, the superintendent of our Sunday School. The next year, through his influence, I united with the church. I consented to this, providing they would accept my confession of faith. This was fifty-eight years ago, but I never felt fully satisfied; so twelve years after, when we moved from Ohio to Michigan, I put my church letter into my bureau, and my husband his into the church. Later we both united with the Universalist church, in which faith he passed on.

I am now an old lady, seventy-seven years of age, and a little over six years ago I had a fall that severly injured my right knee. I was helped into the house and the usual remedies were applied. In two or three weeks I was seemingly as well as ever, but nearly a year after, I had an illness, then rheumatism settled in this knee. I sent for a doctor and during the next four years had three doctors, all well-read, skilful men. During the last year two of them told me that there was no cure for my knee, save by an operation, that the bones had become carious, but that owing to my age, they advised me not to have it done, as probably I could not endure the anesthetics. This was my condition a little over eight months ago,—doomed to be a "shut-in," and to use remedies for temporary relief of pain. A friend who was taking Christian Science treatment told her practitioner of my case, and she sent me word that if I would lay aside my medicines and bandages, take Mrs. Eddy's book, Science and Health, and read it carefully and prayerfully, she felt sure that I would the cured before I had finished the reading of the book. My prejudices were very great against Christian Science, so it was merely to please my friend that I consented to read the book. The day she telephoned for me to come after it, I said that I could not walk there (one block), as my knee was so swollen and painful; so she brought it over. It was three o'clock in the afternoon when I hobbled up to my room, book in hand. I put all the medicines into the closet, took off the bandage; raised my heart to God in prayer, saying: "Dear Father, if there is any healing power in this book, let me find it," and began to read.

I was perfectly astonished at what I read, for I had often been told that it was a mass of nonsensical twaddle, but I found it pure, deep, and soul-inspiring. I read about three hours that evening, slowly and prayerfully, and the same the next afternoon, about eighty pages out of the seven hundred of the book. The next morning when I awoke I was surprised to know that I had not been awakened once during the night with pain in my knee, something that had not happened before in five years. I examined the knee, and found the swelling, inflammation, pain, and soreness all gone. The English language is not adequate to express my feelings, as I hastened down to tell the glad news! My son laughed heartily and said, "Now, mother, do not tell the neighbors, for they will surely think you have gone crazy. Just wait until a change in the weather comes, then you will see where the pain is."

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