Testimony of Healing June 19, 1915 Issue

Having in my youth been thoroughly steeped in agnosticism,...

Thorwald Siegfried

Having in my youth been thoroughly steeped in agnosticism, I acknowledged nothing as truth but the dogmas of materialistic biology. Then at college I awoke to the necessary existence of an intelligence of which the universe is the expression, but that intelligence was to me obviously capricious and humanlike. While it seemed that God's caprice favored me, however, appearing veritably to hold me in the hollow of His hand, my anthropomorphic conception outlasted all assaults.

I recall clearly a conversation in 1901 with two Christian Scientists of Sterling, Ill., on a train, wherein their views of God and mine were clearly expressed and contrasted, but without altering my convictions. It continued so while I lived, talked, and traveled with Scientists, even though the supposed favor of God seemed to turn to disfavor. Early in 1912, while again on a train, the sight of a new copy of Science and Health in the hands of a friend prompted me to tease her about reading this book. In reply she handed it to me, and a half-hour's reading out of passing curiosity revealed the true character of God, as one who is not changed by prayer but understood through it.

After the new thought had germinated in my consciousness a week, I purchased a copy of Science and Health and began to read it. So far had the philosophy of despair supplanted trust in a God of human design, that the sweets of life had no permanent lure; life itself seemed of no consequence, and its end was contemplated with increasing complacency. Instead of such a condition, the truth of Christian Science has provided the understanding with a true fount of living water, at which one can freely drink and not thirst again. It is often said, and truly, that physical healing is the least of the blessings of Christian Science, perhaps as the rough stone of a foundation is less than the dome it supports; yet to our family, as to many others, it has been the proof that the foundation of Christian Science is indeed a rock, the consciousness of Christ, and it has brought with it that "sweet and certain sense that God is Love" (Science and Health, p. 569). We and the children of the household have suffered the conditions which demanded proof that physical ills are but the illusions of a baseless dream. Appetites, long supported by being resisted as realities, vanished completely at a recognition of their unreal character; the wearing of glasses and eye trouble of long standing ceased to be, and in ways too numerous to detail we have been privileged to watch the approach by degrees, in ourselves, our friends, and in the life of the community and nation, of that day in which we shall know the truth, and knowing it, shall be entirely free.

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