Testimony of Healing November 11, 1916 Issue

It was nine years from the time I first took treatment in...

Kate W. Buck

It was nine years from the time I first took treatment in Christian Science before I received physical freedom from periodic and severe attacks of suffering (supposedly neuralgic) which had baffled the various physicians to whom I went. What is called mucous colitis was another thing that caused me great distress. I kept to Christian Science for seven years, taking treatment at intervals, some of the time continuously, and was helped somewhat but not healed. I read and studied with the utmost faithfulness, and, needless to say, went through periods of the blackest discouragement, the question "Why?" being often upon my lips. I felt like an outcast, beyond the pale of healing and emancipation; and while at first buoyant with hope, am sure I reached the point against which Science and Health warns us (p. 260): "Distrust of one's ability to gain the goodness desired and to bring out better and higher results, often hampers the trial of one's wings."

At the end of these seven years the attacks had become more severe and of longer duration, and, under a despairing sense, chancing also to be in a distinctly medical atmosphere, I again (after an unusually severe attack) turned to a specialist, hoping for some respite from the pain that seemed unbearable. The turning aside was, however, of brief duration ; I knew that the attempts to bring relief were purely experimental, surgery and opiates being the alternatives suggested.

Utterly weary of it all, I again turned to Science and Health, the reading of which had never been wholly dropped, for I knew that I had found my religion, whether it ever healed me or not. I remember turning at random to page 162 and reading the positive words, "Christian Science brings to the body the sunlight of Truth, which invigorates and purifies." I once more took heart of grace and prayed for wisdom to understand spiritually and be at peace. For some time after this I worked along unaided, and then one day, after a disheartening experience, went to an old friend who had become a practitioner and again took treatment. After some weeks of faithful work there came a time of freedom, — six months without a twinge of pain, a respite which had been unknown for ten years. That summer was certainly a wonder to me, an awakening to newness of life indeed, with a sense of joy and gratitude that permeated all things. To my surprise and grief, however, there came a recurrence of the trouble, though not so severe; then the attacks came at longer intervals until they entirely disappeared. It is over four years now since there has been any indication of pain.

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