Testimony of Healing March 1, 1913 Issue

The testimonies in the Sentinel have been so helpful to...

Emma Stelter Hopkins

The testimonies in the Sentinel have been so helpful to me that I give mine in the hope that it may encourage some other beginner. Until recently I scoffed at Christian Science, as I considered the teaching full of absurdities and said that I did not like to see people bowing down to Mrs. Eddy. My husband's mother was healed about ten years ago, as the result of two treatments in Christian Science after the attending physician had given up all hope of her recovery; nevertheless, absent treatment seemed so absurdly foolish that we attributed her relief to other causes. She has been a devoted Scientist ever since, although we said: "You might have gotten well anyway."

In September, 1910, I was taken suddenly ill with what the doctors called ovarian hernia, and a foreign growth which could not be relieved without an operation. It was to find a way out of this difficulty that I began the study of Christian Science as taught by Mrs. Eddy. I asked help of a local practitioner, but I shall have to say that I expected her to do the work without my giving up material means. I had been a sufferer from a bowel disorder for so long that it seemed absolutely impossible and extremely dangerous to me to neglect taking the medicine provided by my physician. I had often been taken ill suddenly with a condition of the bowels which I had supposedly inherited from my mother, and the doctor's advice was to be very careful as to diet, etc. When the practitioner discovered that I was using drugs, she remonstrated, and I gave a feeble consent to her advice to try to trust Science. This brought me face to face with radical reliance on God, divine Principle, as taught in Science and Health.

The test of my faithfulness came in a few weeks, when I was again taken with an attack which wakened me from sound sleep. My promise to do without material means came to mind just as I was about to ask for the usual help. I saw the necessity for prompt action, as the suffering was intense, but I resolved to endure rather than prove unfaithful, and I had just made this decision when I was so immediately changed from rigidness and suffering to a quiet restful peace that I wondered at it. It pointed the way for me as clearly as if God had spoken to me, and I have had no fear of the trouble and have had no attacks since. I have needed no medicine since that time and both the rupture and the bowel disorder are completely healed.

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