Testimony of Healing October 25, 1924 Issue

The heart alone can feel what I feebly attempt to write of,...

Edward T. Murphy

The heart alone can feel what I feebly attempt to write of,—my gratitude to God, to Christ Jesus, and to Mary Baker Eddy for the truly Christian religion, Christian Science. I have felt the protecting care and healing power of God many times; but what I consider my most important healing is the reformation of character and the regeneration of my thought.

The doctrine of predestination, whereby I was taught that God was the author of evil, led me as I grew older to abandon God and the religion I had been taught. As I seemed to express so much evil, I thought God had predestined me for eternal damnation. Why, then, should I endeavor to annul God's law by trying to be good? To continue to go to church seemed a mockery, and I was determined to be a hypocrite no longer. I left the church, though I did attend at times to please certain people. This way of living continued until the spring of 1919. After a night of drunkenness, I found myself in prison, sentenced for life. Being in such a depraved mental state, I imagined myself innocent of all wrongdoing.

One day, nearly a year afterward, one whom I had met in the prison and become friendly with spoke to me on the topic of religion. I expressed my opinon as to what I thought God, religion, and churchgoing people were. He contradicted me, saying: "The God I have found is good, is Love; He knows no evil, nor an evil man. What He has created is pure and perfect." I asked him where he had learned anything like that. He told me how he had been healed of a dread disease, after the prison doctors had given him up, by just reading and studying a book about God and man's relation to Him. As he seemed to me to be in excellent health, I expressed the desire to read this book, and he let me have it. It proved to be "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy. I had never heard of Christian Science before, though I had enjoyed the reading of a few copies of The Christian Science Monitor given me a few months before; but not having read the articles on Christian Science I had never suspected it to be connected in any way with religion, though I felt it was superior to most papers I had read.

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