Testimony of Healing February 3, 1923 Issue

About twenty-six years ago, when I was suffering with...

Anna M. Hopper

About twenty-six years ago, when I was suffering with severe lung trouble and a number of other diseases, a friend who was calling said she was reading a Christian Science book. Never having heard of Christian Science, I asked her what Scientists believed. Not having read much of it, however, she said that she could not tell me, but if I would like to read the book she would bring it to me. I told her that I should like to have the book, as reading was all that I was able to do; and she lost no time in bringing it. Afterward, she told me that she just wondered if there really was anything in Christian Science that it could do in my case. Healing was not mentioned; and my thought in reading was just to learn what Christian Science taught as a religion. For some years I had not attended the church in which I was reared; and for two years I had absolutely refused to pray to a God who, I thought, sent affliction. I had attended different churches, hoping to find some comfort, but without avail. Thus I began reading "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy without a thought of healing, but in order to find something about God and what hope in a future salvation it might present to me; for I had a sense of being lost, which was keen distress. I soon became absorbed, not only in Science and Health, but also in the Bible, through looking up the Scriptural quotations to see if they were really as given in the Bible. I soon found myself declaring that Science and Health was the truest book I had ever read. Up to this time, the Bible was only history to me; but immediately, Science and Health proved to be the "key" to it, and I read with understanding.

Through this reading I forgot to take the medicine I had been taking, for I began to realize that God is Love; and for this one thing alone I would always have been grateful to Christian Science, even had I never been healed physically. In less than four weeks I was completely healed of the lung trouble, and have remained so through all these years. I was lifted up to the mountain top; but I had to come down into the valley and work, step by step, upward again. Later, when I took a stand for Christian Science against much opposition, and faithfully studied Mrs. Eddy's works with the Bible, I was healed of spinal weakness, from which I had been a sufferer for more than ten years, and of stomach trouble, from which I had been told I need never expect to be free. So the healing has been going on continually.

I am grateful to all those who have helped me; also for membership in The Mother Church and in a branch church; for the privilege of working in the Sunday school; and for class instruction, which has given me a better understanding of Christian Science and confidence in helping others as well as myself. I am likewise grateful that I am again able to pray to a consistent God of love. I am thankful to God, and grateful to Mrs. Eddy for her teachings of Christian Science.

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