Testimony of Healing August 12, 1911 Issue

It occurs to me I have not been obedient in withholding...

Mary Katharine Best Hicks

It occurs to me I have not been obedient in withholding my testimony to this late day, so I will try to put in practice the following from Science and Health (p. 393): "Rise in the strength of Spirit to resist all that is unlike good," and make good that which I have intended to do for fourteen years. The first time I heard of Christian Science was in 1886, when I was attending school in Boston. The night before school closed, a party of our class had been to Brookline for an outing, and on our way home a doctor said, "You girls have been to every place of interest except the Metaphysical College." I shrank from the suggestion, but the doctor said, "Oh, you must be broader than that!" It was of course ignorance which made me express myself as I did. While at school I had had teachers and classmates that were Unitarians and Universalists, and hearing them talk I felt they had better mental food than I had; so I wrote home to my parents to that effect. My mother replied, "You must remember you are a Presbyterian. Your father says you must be careful with whom you associate, for he had a cousin that went to Boston and got very much mixed in his thought."

In 1893 my mother was taken sick, and the physicians and all the family (except myself) declared that her time had come to die. I felt that God was not a good God to take away my mother. The thought came to me that perhaps if I were willing to pray "Thy will be done," she might be spared to us, not knowing then that it was God's will she should live; but I finally knelt and prayed, "Thy will be done," trusting that God knew best. Only a few hours elapsed and she was better. I held her thus in blind faith for one year, when she was taken sick again; and when she passed on I could not be comforted or reconciled. I felt it was not right.

I heard some of my friends speak in derision about Science and Health, the book which the Christian Scientists used. Some said it was a book not fit to be in any home. For weeks, every time I met the same ladies, they were discussing Science and Health, and finally I said, "If it is such a bad book, why do you talk so much about it? It creates a desire in me to read it, so I can enter into your discussions. Where can I procure one?" One of the ladies said, "I have one, which you may have to read." I borrowed it, read it, and sent for one of my own, and it has been my daily companion ever since. I felt the truth in every word I read in Science and Health, and came to the conclusion that the church triumphant would be demonstrated at once. In fourteen months from the time my mother passed on my sister was taken sick. Physicians diagnosed her case incorrectly and she passed on, being sick only one day. I called it a crime, yet I was silenced, and no one else dared to protest. In three weeks' time my father also passed on.

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