"TESTIMONIES OF HEALING"

Archibald McLellan

We are in receipt of a letter from a friend, a Christian Scientist, who calls attention to the unsatisfactory nature of the subject-matter and character of some of the testimonies given at our Wednesday evening meetings; "testimonies" which do not conform in any manner to the rules of evidence, and which fail to carry conviction to the sincere seeker for truth who, for the first time, upon the solicitation of some friend, has attended one of these meetings. We regret to say that there is considerable justification for this complaint.

The chief trouble with such talks as our friend refers to, is that they are what lawyers call hearsay testimony, and as such they would be ruled out of any court: What the inquirer wishes to know is that some person with whom he is brought into personal contact has been healed. A statement that some person of whom the speaker has heard through some other person has been healed by Christian Science, does not carry much weight with the man who is investigating, neither does the account of cases in which the speaker has acted as practitioner. The most valuable and helpful testimony is that of the persons who have been healed, and if those who speak at the Wednesday evening meetings will bear this in mind and express themselves accordingly, much will be added to the usefulness of the meetings, and the reasonable demands of the investigator will be met.

In this connection, we recall the case of a prominent lawyer who was almost persuaded in his own mind to take Christian Science treatment, but prior to doing so attended a testimony meeting in one of the large cities. It so happened that not one of the persons who spoke at this meeting told of his own healing; one told of the healing of a person living in another city, others told of remarkable cases which they had heard of, still others preached and exhorted, but during the entire time devoted to testimonies no one made a statement which he could accept as conclusive, or within that definition of evidence which he had been taught to use in the practice of his profession. Next day in recounting this experience to a practitioner he said that so far as the meeting was concerned not one word had been spoken which proved to him that any one in that great congregation had been healed by Christian Science, but, fortunately, he had entered into conversation with a gentleman who was in attendance at the meeting, and who, during their conversation, gave the particulars of his own perfect healing through Christian Science treatment of the effects of a wound which several years of medical treatment had failed to reach. This conversation had done the work which the meeting had entirely failed to do, and the lawyer was willing to trust his case to Christian Science.

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