Testimony of Healing March 1, 1924 Issue

I desire to give my testimony of physical and mental...

William Weaver Nott

I desire to give my testimony of physical and mental healing. knowing full well that it will help some one. After years of fruitless struggle for success in a business for which I was totally unfitted mentally, physically, and by training, I finally found myself a physical wreck, and ashamed and humiliated at my failure. I suffered constantly from indigestion, which frequently became acute; also from extreme nervousness. I had one headache which lasted for years without cessation. I suffered much during this time with muscular and inflammatory both right limbs becoming partially useless because of constant pain and inaction. About this time, I turned wearily away from doctors to a patent medicine which promised a cure. I followed directions faithfully, until there was little left of me to follow them further. After this worse than fruitless effort the struggle to provide the simplest necessities for my wife and two small children became more than I could stand. I suffered a slight paralytic stroke and was confined to my bed. I lived much of the time under opiates. The tonic prescribed for years was whisky and quinine; and in time the liquor habit became fixed. Finally, two physicians told me that they could do nothing more for me, and I accepted the situation.

Here Christian Science came to me. I well remember the few gracious words of truth and encouragement that were uttered at the first meeting with the practitioner. Then, after three days of treatment, something glorious occurred. I could not define it then, but now I know that hope, blessed hope, had found a place in my consciousness. I hobbled in my joyful wonderment to the telephone and exultantly declared to the practitioner, "I will wager you that I am going to get well!" He laughingly replied: "You will win. I know that you are going to get well." Those words were precious to me. That was thirteen years ago. My healing was very slow, but was complete. Just in proportion as I learned to look beyond the material body and to dwell in sweeter thinking, and in some degree to lessen ignorance, fear, and human will through the constant reading of the Bible and the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, was my freedom gained, and no faster.

I discovered later that gaining good general health did not complete my task. I found that to remain happy and well I had to lose many wrong mental qualities. Through the earnest study of our textbook I not only found that wrong mental qualities are the soil in which unhappiness and sickness and disease grow, but also found the rule by which to accomplish the work of renovation. Pride, resentment, self-condemnation, and sensitiveness were some of the lions in my path to be first chained and then cast out. This battle was not an easy one, for the carnal mind is stubborn and morbidly enjoys itself. When I came to recognize this, the spiritual meaning of the words of Christ Jesus, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends," became very precious to me. I came to see that I must in sincerity lay down every false sense and viewpoint of life. In this struggle I learned what a glorious thing it is to be able truly to say, "I will arise and go to my father," and even more glorious to put the resolve into action after every tumble.

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