Testimony of Healing April 22, 1911 Issue

My attention was first called to Christian Science when...

Martha Kyle Barding

My attention was first called to Christian Science when by the advice of a dear friend I applied myself to gain an understanding of it, and was healed of a chronic illness of more than twenty years' standing. A severe attack of abdominal trouble had left me a physical wreck and a chronic sufferer from a recurrence of its painful symptoms. Whenever I attempted to walk even a short distance, the pain would confine me for days at a time to bed before I could regain any degree of comfort. I had consulted many good physicians in various cities through which I traveled, who told me that I could never be well again.

Just before my healing in Christian Science I was under the care of one of the best physicians in this city, being prepared to undergo what he said would probably be a fatal operation, but which he thought was absolutely necessary to prolong my life, if I could survive it, as in his opinion I could live only a few miserable weeks without it. To this I consented in sheer desperation, as I had decided that I had rather come to the end than to suffer any longer as I had up to that time. My husband, learning what Christian Science had done for others, urged me to try it, but I scoffed at the absurdity of its helping so hopeless a case as mine; yet I felt the cords of disease and despair tightening around me and dragging me nearer to the operating-table and to death. I was, however, so averse to Christian Science that I would not read the copy of Science and Health which my husband left in my room.

One day, after returning from my physician, who was toning me up for the ordeal of an operation, being unusually despondent, I was walking the floor in my room. Passing a table, I aimlessly picked up a book and seated myself at the window, and to my great surprise I found that I had the text-book of Christian Science in my hand. My first impulse was to toss it away, but on second thought I opened it, and the first thing that attracted me was the chapter on Prayer. I thought I would see what Christian Scientists believed about prayer, and the book held me from that time on. I read and read, till, hearing my husband's steps, I hastily replaced the book where he had left it; but nearly all night I thought of what I had read. I began to see that God was not angry at me, that He was not punishing me; that He could not. I wondered if I had found what I had longed for, oh, so long—a God of love. As soon as my husband left in the morning, I had the book again, and I read all day. I forgot my physician, and when my husband returned in the evening, I did not hide that precious book, I was ready to have him see me reading it. The next day was Sunday. I was at the book bright and early, and at four o'clock in the afternoon I experienced a sense of perfect healing. I turned to my husband and declared that I need never go to the physician's office again, for I was perfectly well.

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