Testimony of Healing December 27, 1913 Issue

For the realization of the power of divine Love which has...

Edith Van Valkenburgh

For the realization of the power of divine Love which has come to me through Christian Science, I wish to acknowledge my sincere gratitude. As I look back over the past years I can see how one human experience after another, though many of them have seemed hard indeed, has brought me "new views of divine goodness and love" (Science and Health, p. 66). As a child I had an earnest religious nature and tried hard to be a Christian, but when I reached maturity I found my religious beliefs irreconcilable with reason, so I turned away from them entirely. Then followed a period of searching, of reading and reasoning in the vain effort to find a solution solution of what seemed the mystery of human life. Many things had occurred to make me bitterly unhappy. The laws of the material universe were laws of cruelty and injustice. I could see nothing but the pain of the world everywhere, with no sense in it or excuse for it, and, worst of all, no way out of it. I grew bitter and somewhat reckless, and tried to conceal my unhappiness under a mocking pride. I was ill when I went back to college for my third year, and had an attack of typhoid fever, which left me a physical wreck.

A year later I taught school, though I was not well enough to do so; but I forced myself on through will-power. After two years of teaching, during which I was experimenting with hypnotism in various forms, I had a complete nervous breakdown. For several years I had been trying one physician after another, and one course of treatment after another, but none of them had given me any relief, and I had grown worse until the collapse came. After a few weeks under a physician I was able to be about again, but was so miserable that I determined to try Christian Science. It would be pleasant to say that I saw the light at once, but such was not the case. The struggle was quite severe, but the few weeks' treatment I then received gave me so firm a faith that I could never let go.

Four years followed, during which I struggled along as best I could, reading and receiving many proofs of divine protection. I did not understand, but I tried to, and I prayed, "O send out thy light and thy truth: let them lead me; let them bring me unto thy holy hill, and to thy tabernacles." Those years have shown me that if we turn to God, no matter how blindly, divine Love shields us and cares for us. At last, after a very dark time, I was led to one who patiently and firmly set me straight. She helped me to lay down my human will and turn away from personality and formula to God; to know that He is able to manifest in our consciousness the truth we need, in proportion as we lay down self-will, self-justification, and self-love, and listen obediently.

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