Testimony of Healing May 2, 1914 Issue

If tongue could tell or language depict the inmost experiences...

Harry D. Sisson

If tongue could tell or language depict the inmost experiences of mortal man, surely the written page could at best but feebly express a condition of consciousness which has come to every Christian Scientist. It is not, therefore, with a thought of lending embellishment to actual experiences that I am moved to voice my gratitude for having lived in an age when it is possible to understand, even in an elementary degree, some of the attributes of an infinite God, who is really, wholly, and infinitely good; but every man who lays righteous claim to the title of Christian Scientist, has in a measure touched the hem of the Saviour's garment, and to some extent has experienced a gratitude that yet remains inexpressible in the face of the most fluent vocabulary. This, then, is not the real story—only an indication of it.

It is just about nine years since it was my misfortune to be suddenly overtaken with a serious collapse, which came wholly unannounced and entirely unexpected. For many years a business career, not materially differing from those of my business acquaintances, had almost completely occupied my attention to the exclusion of nearly all spiritual considerations. Indeed, now in retrospect I can see how the dollar had become my god, its capture and possession my chief aim and purpose. Indwelling, deep down among my real convictions, however, I was conscious of a respect for the Principle enunciated in the golden rule, and my transactions were somewhat guided by its potency. My early years were spent in an environment of religious thought that was very much mixed, ranging as it did all the way from spiritualistic legerdemain to the most uncompromising creeds of modern belief, with a liberal sprinkling of agnosticism thrown in. It is not strange, therefore, that manhood's estate found me with few if any fixed notions of a spiritual nature. In a way this was well, for when my need came I was not hidebound by a lot of inherited theological opinions, and my mind was more open to the flood-tides of Truth.

The cause of the breakdown was ascribed to overwork and strain, incident to the responsibility of important public duties which had been undertaken as the result of the choice of my fellow citizens, by whom I had been elected to a responsible position. Among my cherished friends were a couple of fine men whom I learned to look up to with all the esteem and regard that attaches to one's family physician. One of these was sent for in the night, and he immediately called the other in consultation, with the result that for months following, one or the other was a constant visitor and adviser. After some months it was determined that a change of climate was essential, so I was packed off to the Southland with its new scenes and new faces, only to return in a few weeks poorer in both flesh and pocket. Official cares had been turned over to competent hands, that nothing need be worrisome, but with it all I could not seem to mend. My doctor friend was constant and persistent in an effort to relieve a condition that I could see he feared for me, and with a nobility of purpose which I heartily appreciated, he was giving me of his best effort unselfishly and unsparingly.

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