Testimony of Healing March 11, 1922 Issue

Before knowing anything about it, I had heard Christian Science...

Catherine Young, Downhill

Before knowing anything about it, I had heard Christian Science spoken of and ridiculed as an "American craze," and I never dreamed that it was anything deeper than that and that it could possibly have any meaning to me, until I came into actual touch with its teaching and began to read the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy. I hardly remember a time when I did not have a great desire to understand the world of life around me. Quite early in my experience I felt the sorrow of the world pressing in on me. I tried many different ways of thinking. I had become a member of the Church of Scotland, but that never satisfied me.

I had always desired to be of use in the world, so took up the profession of music and became a worker in the woman's suffrage movement. Life then became increasingly interesting and stimulating, and yet at heart I felt that I was coming no nearer the truth about life than before. I relied entirely on material means, mental and physical, for everything, though had I been told the many isms that I delighted to look into were material I should have been rather indignant. I had also all the old theological beliefs regarding life and death and felt the impossibility of understanding their mystery or of getting to know God in this world.

Finally came the turning point when all these material ways of thinking were powerless to help me at a time of great mental and moral difficulty. I came to a standstill and thinking seemed full of pain. At that time Christian Science came actually within reach and I began to read the textbook. The first thing that struck me in reading the textbook was the constantly recurring thought of man as spiritual and not material. I felt instinctively that in this thought lay the answer to my lifelong seeking. This was really my healing in Christian Science, though at the time I did not realize it. In these days I did not find much else in the textbook to hold on to. I often wondered why there were so many repetitions of the same idea. As I grew toward a clearer understanding of the textbook I realized with joy that it answered all my questions and much more indeed; I only now begin to realize how much more.

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