Testimony of Healing December 30, 1922 Issue

About fourteen years ago, when living in an eastern city,...

Maley B. Crist

About fourteen years ago, when living in an eastern city, a friend lent me a copy of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy. There was certainly never a person more deeply immersed in the belief of the efficacy of materia medica and hygiene than was I, nor one more serenely satisfied with the so-called orthodox church of which I was a member. However, the spiritual beauty of the book so appealed to me that I purchased a copy. I read it daily for two years, steadily believing that despite its beautiful message it was by far too transcendental to be of any practical value.

From earliest infancy I had suffered from chronic constipation, which neither food nor medicine could alleviate, and which baffled the skill of the best physicians, finally developing into intestinal catarrh, which became chronic. For years I had been under the constant treatment of one of the most prominent specialists of international reputation, but found only temporary relief. When I was leaving the East for my new home on the Pacific coast, the specialist frankly told me that my case was incurable. After a year's stay in Portland, still rigidly following the absent specialist's advice, I grew steadily worse. My suffering was such that I felt death was inevitable, unless speedy relief came.

I shall never forget with what fear and trembling I went to a Christian Science practitioner; nor shall I forget the repeated enemas I took before going to her, in spite of the fact that she had strictly, and as I felt in my ignorance of Christian Science, stubbornly refused to treat me unless I discontinued them, although I so painstakingly explained my physical condition and the doctor's warning. This was twelve years ago, and never since that day have I resorted to a single material remedy of any kind. With that first treatment, the catarrhal condition of twenty-four years' standing was healed. The trust in medicine, with the awful fears which that trust begets, and which torments and grips with a clutch of steel, took time, however, to eradicate; and once after this healing there came a crucial test, so severe that forever after I knew that "the Lord he is God; there is none else beside him." The bowels did not act for many weeks. There was not the slightest resort on my part to any material remedy, not even special food; and when, after this long time, the bowels finally acted, the action was perfectly normal and with no ill after effects.

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