Testimony of Healing December 11, 1915 Issue

If my best friend had told me a few years ago of the...

Alice B. Keeney

If my best friend had told me a few years ago of the possibility of the newness of life which came to me in February, 1913, through an appeal to Christian Science for physical healing, I would have scoffed at the idea. I had suffered for fourteen years from a severe intestinal trouble which had baffled the skill of eight good physicians, the last to whom I applied saying the disease was one of the most difficult to heal with which doctors had to contend, and that drugs would be of no benefit. I was grateful for his honest opinion, but left his office with tears in my eyes and sadness in my heart at the seeming hopelessness of my condition. Eight years previous to this time I had submitted to an operation, on the advice of two physicians, and was in the hospital for five weeks, but after returning home much reduced in strength I soon found that the cause of the trouble had not been removed. As before, I was seldom free from pain, and therefore became so discouraged that many times I longed for death, which I thought might bring release or oblivion, although I possessed every earthly comfort which heart could desire except health.

I had once remarked to a woman doctor, who had tried persistently to relieve my condition by electrical and vibration treatments, that the only remedy remaining for me to try was Christian Science. We both made light of the idea at the time, but about a year later she wrote: "Why don't you try Christian Science? I know of many who have been healed." She then mentioned a practitioner, and I finally went to her, thinking it would at least do no harm. When the practitioner asked what I knew of Science, I truthfully replied that I knew nothing whatever about it; and when she asked what was my idea of God, I suddenly realized that my idea of God, I suddenly realized that my idea of the Supreme Being was indeed vague, and that what He was, and where, I knew not. I had attended church the first thirty years of my life, but illness and lack of strength prevented my later attendance. The practitioner said she would like to have me read the Christian Science text-book, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mrs. Eddy. I thought it would probably be uninteresting and difficult to read, like the Bible, which I had never understood, but I took the book home, and after reading it nearly all of one day, was more loath to discontinue the reading than I had been to begin it.

I continued to read Science and Health at every opportunity for about four weeks, the practitioner in the mean time giving me treatment. I did not by any means understand all that was written in the book, but beautiful glimpses of Truth came to me, and the very presence of God was revealed. I lost all sense of time and space, and pain and disease vanished. I had hardly looked at the Bible for twenty years, but in childhood I had committed to memory many of the best passages. These all came to me with a fuller and truer meaning, and I realized that "every word of God is pure." All was reasonable and clear as the understanding came to me that God or good, the only power, is Mind, the perfect Love which removes all fear, the Truth which makes us free, and the abundant Life which knows no death.

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