Testimony of Healing February 10, 1912 Issue

If my expression of thanks will help any other pilgrim...

Juanita W. Porter

If my expression of thanks will help any other pilgrim on his way, I shall indeed be glad, and I am happy to express something of what I feel toward this regenerating truth. So, accepting Longfellow's advice. "Give what you have; to some it may be better than you dare think," I am impelled to speak of some of the benefits that have come to me since five years ago, when I began, carefully and without prejudice, to study Christian Science. The three members of my family attended its services, and I had the alternative of going with them or remaining at home alone. I will say frankly that this was my only motive for going, and just as frankly do I say that at the first few Wednesday evening services I did nothing but scoff at what I heard, and I wondered if the people who testified really believed what they said. By degrees, however, so omnipotent is Love, I began to grasp something of this saving truth, and instead of going to the service to scoff I gave earnest heed. From that stage to the beginning of the study of Christian Science was but a step, and the result was inevitable; I accepted unequivocally its teaching and have indeed found it to be the law of Life to humanity.

Various physical ills have been healed by the treatment of a practitioner, but it was alone through the understanding which came from the reading of Science and Health that I was enabled to lay aside glasses which I had worn for nine years and which the oculist said I would always have to wear, as he had pronounced mine an unusually serious case of defective vision. It is now over three years since I discarded the glasses, though my work as a church reader and in other vocations calls for considerable use of my eyes.

The demonstrations of physical healing in my husband's case have seemed even more wonderful than my own. Several times in the past five years he has been healed in a few days of well-developed attacks of acute lung trouble, a disease which had kept him in bed about two months at one time, when he had turned to materia medica. My mother and sister, too, have received much help from Christian Science. Infinitely more, however, than the physical benefit derived from a study of Christian Science,' is the uplift in character and ideals, and the fact that it gives one a purpose in life—a purpose which one can neither shirk nor indolently postpone till the future, but which is a vital and present work, and this purpose is to eliminate all selfish motives and to work alone for the furthering of the cause of good. To do this one must faithfully and conscientiously follow the leading of Principle. Instead of leading one in the "line of least resistance," the path which mortal mind would suggest, it involves the bearing of a cross; but the cross must be cheerfully, gladly borne, if the crown is to be won.—Juanita W. Porter, Joplin, Mo.

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