I gratefully acknowledge the many benefits which I have...

Alfred G. Hoffmann

I gratefully acknowledge the many benefits which I have received through Christian Science. Four years ago I spent the last months of my commerical apprenticeship in a large concern in this locality, for the purpose of acquiring a practical knowledge of the technical part of the business. I was assigned to a place in the foundry, where all the workmen predicted that I would get a fever as an effect of the fumes of melting metals. I told my mother of these prognostications, and she advised me to protect myself against the erroneous beliefs involved by strictly maintaining a Christianly scientific attitude of thought. To the great astonishment of all my fellow workers, six weeks elapsed without the dreaded condition manifesting itself. One day, however, while melting fourteen skillets of metal I must have allowed thoughts of fear to enter my consciousness, for, briefly, I dragged myself home in a half-conscious condition with barely enough strength left to tumble into bed, where my mother, who was away just then, found me later, totally unconscious. She remained in my room and read from the text-book, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," for quite a while, holding to the thought that nothing which our duty requires us to do, can harm us. (See Science and Health, p. 385.) My mother told me later that my father, upon returning home, was terribly frightened when he saw me. All I know is that I fell asleep late that night and went to work very early the next morning, feeling entirely well, and that I never experienced any after effect from the condition above described.

One year later I was taken ill with a severe attack of appendicitis,accompanied by high fever and ague, and although much fear and anxiety was expressed by those surrounding us, my mother and I remained firm in our stand not to call in a physician but to ask for treatment in Christian Science. The result was complete healing within a few days. At Christmas, 1911, during my stay at Montreux (Switzerland), where I was acquiring a knowledge of the French language, a severe pulmonary affection set in, and the physician for whom I was obliged to send in order to get a certificate to explain my absence from business, stated the case to be pleurisy, and that I must be given the greatest of care. Being unable to overcome the illness myself, I wrote, while in bed, to my mother in Frankfort-on-the-Main. She came immediately, after having asked the practitioner who had often and lovingly assisted us on previous occasions, to take up treatment for me. I was completely restored within a very short time, without any medical help or physician in attendance, but solely through the power of God, who, as the psalmist says and as Christian Science explains, is "a very present help in trouble."

Alfred G. Hoffmann, Frankfort-on-the-Main, Germany.

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