Testimony of Healing October 11, 1913 Issue

It is now six years since I first inquired about Christian Science

H. Faithfull Cumberlege

It is now six years since I first inquired about Christian Science. I was not practically forced to become a student of Christian Science because of a pressing need of physical healing, nevertheless my life was far from being a happy one. I claimed that I enjoyed good health, but I was in fact always troubled more or less by various annoying physical ills, both chronic and occasional. These I regarded as necessary evils which I must "stick out," disdaining to complain but suffering none the less. I was always so obsessed with anxiety over money matters that enjoyment in work or at play was perpetually overshadowed and spoiled by fear and worry; but, like recurring sickness, chronic limitation and worry appeared to me to be nothing out of the way.

As time passed, however, persistent study of Mrs. Eddy's writings and constant effort to put into practise as much of her teaching as I could understand at the moment, wrought such wonderful changes in me, both physically and morally, that I came ipso facto to comprehend by contrast what a miserable counterfeit of true existence my former experience had been. This process of reformation also confirmed for me in the most practical manenr the availability of the spiritual law as taught in Christian Science, and also proved for me the scientific truth of the Biblical declaration that God gave man dominion over all the earth, i.e., material sense. Then I saw that I had been the servant of material sense for so many troubled years quite unnecessarily, that it was only ignorance of the truth which had caused me to resign myself without an effort to false and unpleasant conditions which I could have prevented had I only known how. I had learned at last that there was no other reason for my past misfortunes than my lack of true knowledge of God.

This lack of knowledtge is best expressed by the term "god-lessness," and I suffered from its baneful influence in no small measure. Nominally I belonged to a church, but of late years I had rarely attended it. I had had normal religious instruction in my youth, but mere admonition on moral and ethical questions lacked power to influence me, because it was in my nature to demand a reason for everything before I could believe it. No doctrine that was put before me could stand the searching analysis prompted by the convincing testimony of the physical senses, but Christian Science annihilates it by challenging successfully the very existence of matter. Thus I had nothing to lean upon in my daily life except the inherent sense of right which obtains in all human beings. As is so frequently the case, however, this sense was obscured to such an extent by the imperative demands of the five physical senses for a recognition of matter's claims, which ignorance of Principle made it impossible for me to deny, that it was not strong enough to prevail when material sense and right were pulling in opposite directions. In this condition of mind I became a ready tool of the human will or carnal mind, which is one with these physical senses.

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