Testimony of Healing September 11, 1920 Issue

Christian Science came to me when I seemed without...

Sara Fuller Kellogg

Christian Science came to me when I seemed without hope or God in the world. I had repudiated denominational religion when very young, for it seemed to me illogical and unreasonable. As the years went on, confusion, failure, and finally disaster seemed to beset me everywhere. My health became seriously impaired through chronic inflammation of the intestines, and one nervous breakdown after another followed. I searched very thoroughly for health, both in Europe and America, through materia medica, osteopathy, and various other means offered to suffering humanity. Search after search ended in disappointment and finally in despair. Meantime I had studied various religions and philosophies, none of them giving me the slightest satisfaction, but seeming to increase my hopelessness. I was overburdened with the care of a business, which I had entered into to support myself and my only child, delicate from her birth and requiring constant care, and this business was crumbling away.

In this condition I was invited by the head of a great theological seminary, to whom I had expressed my bitterness, to attend an all-day session of sermons from different preachers. I eagerly accepted, hoping to find something to help me. At the end of the day, I was heartsick with disappointment. These men, I clearly saw, were both good and intelligent, but they had nothing I could take hold of. If they had nothing for me, it seemed to me I had nothing more to hope for, but surely "man's extremity is God's opportunity." It was only a few days after this that the textbook of Christian Science was placed in my hands. I knew nothing of Christian Science, and looked at the book more with interest than with the idea of getting any help from it. My interest arose from what I had read of it in an article in a magazine, which purported to give the life of what, even then, seemed to me its remarkable author. I read the first chapter, on "Prayer." What words can convey the amazement, wonder, and trembling hope that thrilled me at every word? I could not grasp all of it, but here at last was a God I could understand and love and—wonder of wonders—prove. Such a sense of thankfulness, of conviction of the truth of the statements I read welled up within me that I arose from my bed instantaneously healed. I at once went downstairs and ate, hungrily and heartily, of all that was on the table, something I had not done for many years. All ill effects from food disappeared and have never recurred. This was in 1907. From that day to this, Christian Science has been all-in-all to me. One by one my problems found a solution that blessed me and all connected with me. An entirely new life opened for me. Anxiety was replaced by surely and I indeed found that, as Mrs. Eddy says on page 265 of Science and Health, "This scientific sense of being, forsaking matter for Spirit, by no means suggests man's absorption into Deity and the loss of his identity, but confers upon man enlarged individuality, a wider sphere of thought and action, a more expansive love, a higher and more permanent peace."

Words fail me to express adequately my thankfulness to God for His gift to mankind—Christian Science—or my gratitude to Mrs. Eddy for her unceasing, loving labor to bring this gift within our comprehension, and I am deeply grateful for that wonderful experience, class instruction, and for membership in The Mother Church, and to the dear friends who have helped me so lovingly and patiently to put away old things and to see the new. I cannot close this testimony without grateful acknowledgment of the inestimable help received from the periodicals established by divine wisdom, through our Leader. The Sentinel, the Journal, the Herald have been to me a "cloud of witnesses" to help and hearten me through all these years, and the Monitor has ennobled for me every aspect of human life and its activities.