Testimony of Healing October 12, 1912 Issue

I gladly give my experience in Christian Science, as taught...

Carrie Shelton Ballew

I gladly give my experience in Christian Science, as taught by our beloved Leader Mrs. Eddy, although pen can never tell what Christian Science means to me. Several years of my life, prior to coming to the truth, had been spent in a school of sad experience, which was slowly but surely weaning me from belief in false gods. These I now see falling one by one, as with the understanding I have gained I try to help others who are bound.

Over three years ago, I first learned something of Christian Science and its efficacy in healing sickness and sin. It was when my child was, to quote Mrs. Eddy, "apparently near the confines of mortal existence, standing already within the shadow of the death-valley" (Science and Health, p. 108), that I learned the truth of the statement that "man's extremity is God's opportunity." After nine weeks of hoping for the better, but only seeing conditions grow more alarming, with no hope left, Christian Science was presented to us. We turned to it for the healing of the child, and within the same week we attended our first Christian Science service, the child accompanying us. On the wall of the church was this quotation from the Psalms: "Who is so great a God as our God?" This meant much to me at that time, and I felt greatly uplifted; indeed, it seemed that with the healing of our child there had come to us that "peace of God, which passeth all understanding;" but from the service I was not conscious of deriving any special good, or even of understanding it, neither did I realize that I had been on the mount and had seen the Christ-healing demonstrated.

For several years prior to this, I had been a great sufferer from sorrow and sickness, material law having sentenced me to about one year more of the carthly pilgrimage. Feeling that I had a great burden of sorrow to bear, which material pleasures had failed to lighten, my mental suffering was so great that physical pain was but secondary. Here Christian Science found me. In three days after I had turned to God for help I was the owner of a Bible and a copy of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mrs. Eddy. I began to read, and in a short time all my suffering was gone,—I was neither a physical nor mental wreck any longer.

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