Testimony of Healing April 22, 1922 Issue

Some years ago, after relying from my earliest recollection...

Florence Gilman Hart

Some years ago, after relying from my earliest recollection upon materiality and a personal sense of love and protection, the hour came to me which our Leader, Mrs. Eddy, points to in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 266), the hour when I was "solitary," bereft of every relative or near friend, alone, and desolate. Then one hard experience followed another through long years of lack, loneliness, strife, and struggle, against which my heart rebelled and I seemed to grow more bitter day by day. At times I felt myself wronged, hopeless, and forgotten of God. I could scarcely believe there was a God.

Later, after I was left stranded and without support, a Christian Scientist came under the same roof with me. I was disposed to ridicule Christian Science, since it bore no relation to my preconceived ideas of living and thinking. I had been a member of a prominent church in Brooklyn, New York, where I once taught a class in the Sunday school, and when I went to Europe to study I had the prayers of the church for my blessing and safety. I was eminently satisfied with my religious training, believing that I had the very best that could be offered to me. One day, after asking and receiving from this lady some information on the subject of Christian Science, I very abruptly said to her that nothing could ever take me out of my church; and meanwhile I was inwardly congratulating myself on what I considered my loyalty and good sense. I resolutely maintained this—as I supposed—exalted attitude, until, through daily observation of the life and devotion of this Christian Scientist, I became more familiar with the nature of her work.

Looking back to the hour when I first met this dear woman, it is very humiliating to remember that I even asked some one in the house if Christian Science was respectable, as I had never before come in contact with it; to which this person replied that there could be no doubt that this lady was all that a lady should be. Nevertheless, I observed her rather closely, looking for idiosyncracies of one sort or another. But, finally, I was led to ask for treatment from her. Then I was convinced of the truth of Christian Science. Over and over I had to meet the various phases of fear, all the suggestions of inefficiency, poverty, mental torture, and distress clinging about me like a web to hinder or defeat my every effort for advancement. Many times in my endeavour I have faltered, stumbled, or seemed to fail but always the true and tender word was spoken, the sustaining arm extended.

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