Testimony of Healing September 14, 1912 Issue

I was in Brisbane, Queensland, when I first heard of...

Lucie Downes

I was in Brisbane, Queensland, when I first heard of Christian Science, which came to me in answer to an earnest longing to understand God. Words can never express the great joy it was to find that this teaching brought to light a God who is absolute good, knowing no evil. This absoluteness of God came as an overwhelming experience; I was a new creature indeed! and at first felt so lifted up in thought that the whole world was changed to me. I would ride on my bicycle miles away with copies of the Sentinel in my bag, singing aloud at times with joy, and letting fall these loving messengers anywhere that I thought people might find them.

Although I was laughed at by most of my friends to whom I spoke freely in the early days of my awakening, I never doubted for a moment that this was the truth and that it would be the savior of all. After reading "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mrs. Eddy, for a few weeks, it dawned upon me that my whole being could be transformed, and I ceased taking a certain medicine which I had used for fourteen years and which it seemed I could not live without, since after the birth of twins a doctor had said the internal organs were so deranged that I would always need this medicine. If ever I went without, I suffered great misery, both physical and mental. The time had come, however, to test this truth, and I determined to cease using the drug. One evening I held the bottle in my hand and went through a mental struggle, listening to the voice of Truth and then the plea of error, till finally I threw away the bottle and said aloud, "Let God be true, and every man a liar;" and I felt then that if God were not true I preferred to die.

After the third day I told my husband what I had done. He knew that I was studying "some new religion," as he called it, and he had seen and acknowledged the good it had done me, but he did not understand the effect this teaching had upon the body, so he insisted that I take the drug; that I had never been able to do without it, and that if I tampered with my health I should again be in the doctor's hands and there would be "a fine doctor's bill to pay." I, however, managed without irritating him to avoid going back to this medicine, although I must confess that after hearing his prognostications of evil a little fear did creep in, and I began to feel some of the old symptoms; but just then, quite unexpectedly, my husband had to leave home and was away six weeks. I had never before been glad to have him away, but now I was relieved, for I was left free to work out my salvation, and so it proved.

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