Testimony of Healing April 7, 1917 Issue

Christian Science was brought to my notice in 1903

Eloise Hallenbeck

Christian Science was brought to my notice in 1903. At that time I was a physical wreck, yet felt sure that if medicine could not cure me nothing could. Christian Science might help nervous troubles, I thought, but not an organic trouble. I soon realized, however, that in truth one disease is as readily overcome as another, because the healing is spiritual. My healing, though very slow, was complete and permanent. I was extremely happy when I realized my freedom, and I knew Truth had made me free. Almost at once I began to prove for others that God is an ever present help. I however neglected to work for myself daily, feeling sure that if I was proving the truth for others it would be sufficient.

Then my husband passed on, my home was broken up, friends deserted me, and I was left alone so far as human aid was concerned. The situation overwhelmed me, and I collapsed both mentally and physically. I could not understand why I had to pass through this Red Sea and the wilderness, but one day when everything seemed dark I picked up Science and Health to see if I could find a solution there. I opened to page 266 and read the passage beginning, "Would existence without personal friends be to you a blank?" The scales fell from my eyes, and I saw how necessary this pruning had been, for I had placed human friends on pedestals; but even then I could not quite give up the wrong sense and think rightly.

At this time I attended service in The Mother Church, and during the repetition of the Lord's Prayer the word "forgive" stood out like the handwriting on the wall. "Forgive, and you will have peace," kept ringing in my ears. I had pondered that word for many years, not understanding just how to forgive; but I went home feeling sure that God would show me the way. Finally it came to me that to forgive means to change one's false thinking, to give up error for Truth, to see one's friends as God's ideas and not as human personalities. My consciousness was illumined, my thought completely changed. Weeks, however, lapsed into months before I fully realized that I had never been separated from or deprived of one iota of good, for God is Love and is infinite. Then my thought went out in love to all of God's ideas. Truth has obliterated much of the past, and I am confident that before long it will have faded completely from my thought.

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