Testimony of Healing February 26, 1916 Issue

Twenty years ago Christian Science was first brought to...

Caroline Beecher Silva

Twenty years ago Christian Science was first brought to my attention by a sister who through great tribulation had come to a perception of this law of God, but I would have none of it. Four years went by, and then my beloved mother passed away under medical treatment. At this time of grief I found I had nothing to sustain me when I came face to face with what I called "that grim reality, death."

Then I went to visit this same sister, and what a changed household I found! In the six weeks that I stayed there I never heard an unkind word said to any one or about any one. I never heard sin, disease, or death talked about, and I felt that a religion which wrought such practical results was the one for which I was looking. I needed physical healing, as I had been under the doctors' care much of the time for fifteen years; but more than all I needed spiritual healing, for I was of a most morbid nature, sensitive to slights, quicktempered, and unhappy. So without any sense of religious emotion I commenced the study of Christian Science. I had been a church-member from the age of fifteen, but I had gradually drifted into non-churchgoing, and my only religion was a conviction that if I did the best I knew how to do, everything would come right in the end. I realized, however, that my sister had found something in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," that had brought to her an understanding of the law of God which all my years of orthodoxy had never bestowed on me. So I determined to find out about it for myself, and began studying the Bible together with Science and Health.

I was so steeped in laws of hygiene that it seemed very difficult for me to apprehend the statements of truth which now seem so simple and clear. I read and reread Science and Health without seeming to grasp its meaning in the slightest degree, but having seen what the understanding of it could do, I kept persistently at it. Treatment was given me at the same time, without any apparent result, but gradually the light of understanding came to me, and in proportion as it grew clearer, the physical ailments disappeared. I have not yet attained to perfect physical health, but I have learned that when fear, belief in heredity, resentment, pride, and the like, are allowed to enter my thought, then inharmonious physical conditions are manifested. When I banish these thoughts and think only the truth about God and man, harmonious results follow, and I am thankful to have learned this much.

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