Testimony of Healing February 27, 1915 Issue

It would be wrong longer to delay in sending this my public...

James N. Noble

It would be wrong longer to delay in sending this my public expression of thankfulness to Almighty God for the blessings received from Him, through the agency of Christian Science. It is several years since I first secured a copy of the text-book, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," and devoted some months to its careful though critical study. I now see how natural it was that no benefits, spiritual or physical, followed such study, though I was sadly in need of both. I nevertheless felt that the author taught of a God for whom I had been searching from boyhood, so I determined to learn more of Christian Science. To this end I secured a so-called biography of the life of Mrs. Eddy, and regret that I was so foolish as to believe it and to say that I could never follow such a woman; and for three years I did not, though I continued to read her book.

In my early boyhood I gradually lost the hearing of my right ear, and at the age of eighteen I suffered agonies at the hands of an aurist, who said that the hearing could never be restored, as the drum had fallen too far. When I was nineteen I had to give up a valuable position, as an oculist's decision was that I would lose my sight if I continued the work. My eyes were then fitted with spectacles, which I wore with repeated changes for twenty-five years. Soon after I was seventeen I had rheumatic fever, and the heart was said to be seriously affected. In nine years I had six further attacks of the same illness, being absent from business each time for some months; then during these years obstinate bowel trouble developed. My heart has been examined by no less than twenty-two physicians in this country and in Great Britain, and all declared that the condition was a very serious one. I never left home for a day without carrying restoratives with me, and I often had to use them. Twelve years ago I was told by my physician that I would never do another day's work. Then came change of diet and hydropathic treatment, with the study of hypnotism, will-power, etc., and these seemed to help for a time. Many isms were studied in the search for spiritual comfort, but all to no purpose. Before I was thirty I became weary of Christianity as preached in the church of my parents.

In 1905 a stricture, piles, and fistula added seriously to a life already overburdened with pain and ill health. In 1910 dropsy, the final stage of my chief trouble, developed, and in two years brought me so low that I was on the brink of the grave. My feet were so swollen that I was compelled for months to wear slippers most of the time. I could not work at my profession of public accountant for more than an hour at a time, and spent the greater part of each day on a couch in a private office, simply waiting for death. It was in this condition that a Christian Science friend found me, early in June, 1912. Truly man's extremity was God's opportunity. This friend, to whom I explained what I thought I knew of Christian Science, kindly lent me the true biography of our Leader by Sibyl Wilbur, and I read it in a humble way quite new to me. Then I hailed Mrs. Eddy as one I would be prepared to follow all the way, if I could find the strength.

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