Testimony of Healing July 27, 1912 Issue

A great many mortals are looking for the truth, although...

Pauline Archibald

A great many mortals are looking for the truth, although not all of them know it. Heartsick and weary of the husks of materialism, they would fain return to the Father's house, if they only knew how. To those weary and heavy-laden ones who are looking for the light, I would speak a word of hope and cheer.

Brought up in an orthodox church, I was taught to read the Bible, which I could not understand, and I prayed to a God who never seemed to answer my prayers, but I was told that I must love God and bear all that He sent without murmuring, and that if I wandered from this straight and narrow way God would punish me, and I would endure everlasting punishment. Finding it impossible to practise what the Bible seemed to teach, I became a so-called backslider, but occasionally when attending a revival meeting, or when some of my religious friends would interest themselves in my welfare, I would try again.

I continued to try and fail and then be sorry, but no matter how hard I tried I could not be a Christian for any length of time. The Bible taught that the followers of Christ must be stanch and firm, and swerve not, and I became disgusted with myself for being so unstable and changeable. This went on for years, but hidden deep was an undercurrent of fear of punishment from God, so firmly had my early teaching taken root. From time to time I investigated various religions, also so-called faith-healing, but whatever interest or enthusiasm I had soon wore away. At one time I heard the words Christian Science and asked a friend what it was, but was informed that it was the work of the devil and to have nothing to do with it. I would like to have been good and to have been at peace if I had only known how, but as I looked around me and on all sides saw sorrow, trouble, and poverty, suffering, injustice, and deceit, I became hardened and skeptical. I argued that if there were a God I did not care to know anything more about Him. I was a wanderer without hope or God in the world. In the mean time I married one whose concept of God was similar to my own, who also had tried, become disheartened, and had no use for religion. As the years went on I became a physical wreck, a great sufferer, evidently beyond hope of doctors, as they could do nothing more for me. Discouraged, and in a hopeless condition, I would gladly have died only for a sense of fear of what the future held.

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