Testimony of Healing July 6, 1912 Issue

During my experience as an undergraduate in college,...

Carl H. Pierce

During my experience as an undergraduate in college, at which time I frequently attended different churches in the hope of finding a religion that would prove satisfying to the heart, I asked the different ministers in the university many questions which they did not answer to my satisfaction. One of the answers, I remember, was: "God's ways are mysterious and past finding out." At another time a question addressed to a beloved friend brought this answer: "What was good enough for our fathers to believe is good enough for us." Meanwhile, like Paul, there were evidences all around of those who wished to do right but found that though they had this wish the ability to do right was wanting. During the ensuing years before having heard of Christian Science I was like a ship at sea without a rudder. When I did first hear of it, through the report that a neighbor had taken it up, I derided it without knowing why, and said to myself: "It must be of the devil,"—a remark which I have frequently heard others make who knew nothing of the subject.

Subsequent years of mental and financial misery brought me to the pass where I was ready to accept anything that offered relief, and with this in view I searched through the creeds and beliefs of different drugless methods, but the necessity for the healing of a friend, and the failure of efforts in other directions, finally turned my attention to Christian Science. I shall never forget the sense of peace that came with that first service in Christian Science, to which I at last turned in the hope of finding out as to whether this was or was not the truth from God. And though past environment and education had led and was to lead me many a weary mile before some of the more pronounced errors and governing fears could be laid aside and proven false, yet I say it in gratitude that the truth, as given us by Mrs. Eddy, has healed me and my family and led us into the light. While I did not for myself seek Christian Science for the physical healing, I found that there are qualities of thought, temper, and impulse which are sadly in need of correction, among which might be mentioned self-love, self-justification, self-righteousness, self-pity, envy, jealousy, resentment, revenge, anger, irritability, selfishness, and the like. All these were dormant in my thought, one might almost say like a bed of snakes,—very much alive, but not wishing to be disturbed. Kind Scientists were loving enough to point these out to me, little by little as I was able to bear the uncovering, until they became very apparent to me, and I began to realize a sense of joy at the thought of their destruction. It astonishes one, as he looks back upon these errors, to see how much in bondage the human family has been to wrong mental conditions, and while no one perhaps would venture to say that they are as yet wholly destroyed in his thought, yet every Christian Scientist can truly say that they are being destroyed.

I also wish to testify to the change that has come into my life through the teaching of Christian Science in the awakening of a desire to glorify God. Past training was all toward that glorification of self to which human ambition, education, and accomplishment seem to contribute, but little by little Christian Science has begotten in my heart a love of work for God which brings a joy that the world and its attainments cannot give. Christian Science has also brought me a growing sense of the meaning of the Bible, including Jesus' statement that if a man seeks his own life he shall lose it, but he that loseth his life "for my sake" shall find it; also this: "There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake, and the gospel's, but he shall receive an hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal life."

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Testimony of Healing

I wish to express my gratitude for what Christian Science...