Testimony of Healing September 27, 1919 Issue

When Christian Science was first brought to my notice...

Frank Bertrand

When Christian Science was first brought to my notice about twelve years ago I, like the majority of mankind, was striving to secure happiness, or at least contentment, in the so-called pleasures of this mortal sense of life, which always ended in bitter disappointment. I knew nothing about Christian Science; I criticized it is "only another new denomination of religious fanatics." Later, however, repeated disappointments made life seem so unbearable and hopeless that at last I secretly went to a practitioner. After she had treated me I was immediately relieved of that miserable, hopeless depression. She advised me to buy "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mrs. Eddy and read it, and when I left her office I almost ran to the reading room, everything else forgotten but the one desire to obtain that book. I secured the book and was very soon healed of the liquor habit, and of pipe smoking, which had been indulged in for years. Since then I have experienced a gradual release from my worst mortal enemies, which manifestly were passion, selfishness, envy, hatred, profanity, and fear. Hatred and resentment made me so ill at one time that I kept vomiting for almost a week and was seemingly at the point of passing on, when I was healed through the help of a practitioner.

Once while in bathing I fractured the bones in the toes of my right foot by striking them against a rock. This injury, accompanied with symptoms of a severe chill and the claim that I had stayed in the water too long, also sunburn, seemed to incapacitate me for using my understanding of Christian Science. I was traveling at the time with a company of theatrical performers and knew that I must appear at the performance next day or cause quite a financial loss to the manager and my fellow workers, as I had no understudy. That night I could not walk across my room. I asked for help from a practitioner and soon afterwards went to sleep. The next morning the fever and chill had left me and I was able to walk. A day or two later the open wound was entirely healed. I appeared regularly at each performance without any incapacity whatever. The sunburn took a little longer to heal.

Christian Science is enabling me to know that the material self is nothing more than a supposititious counterfeit of the real man, claiming an existence separate from God, the one and only creator. I am deeply grateful to be living in this age when the "Comforter" has come to humanity in Christian Science, with all its manifold blessings in its Christlike activities, its literature distribution, its Bible Lessons, and its helpful lectures that always carry a healing message. To our revered Leader, Mrs. Eddy, God's messenger to this age, who worked with unselfish devotion that mankind should be emancipated from their manifold false beliefs, I shall always feel a deep sense of gratitude.

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