Testimony of Healing November 2, 1912 Issue

Before coming to Christian Science all I had known had...

Clara Shepard

Before coming to Christian Science all I had known had been suffering, pain, hope deferred, ambition disappointed, and an unsatisfied longing to know that to which I could find no answer. I listened to want people said, read books, went to Sunday school, later joined a church, attended the services Sunday after Sunday, hoping each time I would hear that "something" which would satisfy. The preaching was all intended to be and to do good, but it did not answer my questions or tell me what I wished to know. Suffering in body year after year, all manner of material remedies were tried; but I was "nothing bettered, but rather grew worse," physically and financially, as is said in the Bible of the woman who "had suffered many things of many physicians."

I was somehow impressed that through religion help could be gained, if but the one right word might be said. Emerson says that if one will only listen, he will have all his questions answered, for the answer is before the question. Then I listened more attentively, and one day a friend said, "There is help outside of medicine. Come and try it." Promptly I accepted the invitation, and the door into the Father's house stood wide open. Father-Mother, heaven, home,—all were found. I was healed of all belief in disease; and the manifestation of it, which had seemed a torment for so long, disappeared. This gladdening gleam of the true idea of God has never been dimmed, but grows brighter and brighter with every experience. In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mrs. Eddy, there was nothing lacking to satisfy all my questioning, for through my study of this book I learned the facts of existence: what good is, and what is good; and what man is as God made him; what evil is, and is not, and how to dispose of it as a seeming.

There is nothing more for which to "want." I now know that Truth alone is Mind, and Mind is Truth; and the salvation from all evil is in denying it any place in thought, any power, any time, or existence anywhere; therefore it has no temptation in it to turn one from knowing the truth which alone can satisfy. Christian Science has taught me that in the Father's house all things are governed orderly, harmoniously, changelessly; His flock are fed in green pastures, beside still waters; there are no wars, no misunderstandings, no misinterpretations,—"nothing that worketh or maketh a lie." I have also learned that all of God's ideas express His character, and that the statement of truth, when iterated and reiterated in the human thought or consciousness, lift this consciousness into purer desires and actions, and joy is the reward always. Jesus said, "If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you." Mrs. Eddy says in Science and Health (p. 261), "Hold thought steadfastly to the enduring, the good, and the true, and you will bring these into your experience proportionably to their occupancy of your thoughts." All who learn and live Christian Science as Mrs. Eddy teaches the subject in Science and Health, may be helped, and be helpful at all times, lacking nothing, for she has put into words everything that they can express in explanation of divine Mind and His ideas.

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