Testimony of Healing January 17, 1914 Issue

It is with the hope that my testimony may help and...

Charles A. Henry

It is with the hope that my testimony may help and encourage some one else that I gratefully tell how Christian Science has healed me, physically, morally, and spiritually. Perhaps one of the most striking instances I have experienced of the physical healing occurred about a year after I began its study. I awoke early one morning, suffering from a severe pain in my side, which I recognized as an attack of appendicitis. I had no difficulty in diagnosing it as such, because I had had an exactly similar attack a few years before, on which occasion I was taken to a nursing home and three doctors thus diagnosed the case. I then suffered great pain for several days, and though I escaped an operation, I was told that the trouble was sure to return, and when it did an operation would be necessary.

Though I had several slight attacks after that, the first really severe one came, as I have already stated, after I had been studying Christian Science about a year. This attack seemed to be an exact repetition of the first one; it took place at the same time in the morning, and whenever I tried to get up I was prevented because of the pain. I am glad to say, however, that on this occasion it never occurred to me to turn for help in any other direction than to God. For about an hour the struggle was pretty severe; then the thought came to me quite clearly, that because God is the only Life, and He is man's life, neither matter nor disease could possibly affect or disturb me in any way. The moment the light of this truth shone into my consciousness all fear vanished, the pain went with it, and I was healed. I immediately got up and dressed, and have never had a return of the trouble, though seven years have elapsed since that time.

For the physical healing by Christian Science we are naturally very grateful, but, as Mrs. Eddy says on page 272 of Science and Health, "it is the spiritualization of thought and Christianization of daily life, in contrast with the results of the ghastly farce of material existence; it is chasity and purity, in contrast with the downward tendencies and earthward gravitation of sensualism and impurity, which really attest the divine origin and operation of Christian Science." I recognize what a sacred privilege it is to be able to testify to the truth of this statement. I know and feel, as every Christian Scientist knows and feels, the moral purification and spiritual baptism that the study of Christian Science brings about; but these cannot be expressed in words. I can only say, that my thoughts and desires are purer than they ever were before; that whereas before I knew of Christian Science I had not opened the Bible for many years, never went to church if I could possibly avoid it, thought that I did not want to know anything about God, who permitted the suffering and sorrow and sin in the world, now the Bible is my favorite book. I love our church services, and I am learning to know and am hungering and thirsting for a still better knowledge of Him who is ever-present Love. I owe all this experience to Christian Science, and to Mrs. Eddy, through whom this saving message of Truth has been revealed to this age. I am indeed grateful, and my desire is to show my gratitude by works as well as by words.

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Testimony of Healing

A deep sense of thankfulness to God, and gratitude to our...