Testimony of Healing January 1, 1927 Issue

I feel I should like to express my gratitude to God,...

Alfred G. Barton

I feel I should like to express my gratitude to God, to Christ Jesus, the Way-shower, to Mrs. Eddy, and to all Christian Scientists for providing the means whereby I may bear testimony to the healing truth as revealed through Christian Science. It was in answer to earnest prayer to God that He would lead me to some book, or to some one, whereby I could learn more of Him, that I came into Christian Science. My whole being was crying out for what Emerson terms, in substance if not in actual words, "That Something," of which he was conscious but which needed Mrs. Eddy to describe it.

Our new neighbor, a Christian Scientist, hearing that I was a student of the Bible, most generously lent me most of Mrs. Eddy's writings. "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" I could not understand to begin with, but "Miscellaneous Writings" held me, and I read it with great joy, which was greatly increased when the light dawned that God is All, and that I needed no more medicine, such as pills, drugs, and so on, of which I had taken so many and in such quantity that my wife and my friends were alarmed at what they termed overdoses. I had always keenly resented the belief that man must bow down to a pill, so I took double and treble doses in order the more quickly to remove the evil and thus prove I would not be dominated by it!

My gratitude for this Christian Science healing was so great that I was lifted up to the heights, and immediately set out to tell my friends, who I thought would be as pleased to know of it as I was. My Christian Science friend warned me against wholesale broadcasting without discrimination, but at the time I put aside the warning as ridiculous. I soon learned of the bitterness of a zeal "not according to knowledge." At times it seemed overwhelming; I would then return ot my books, rising early and staying up late, reading with great determination to find out what was the evil, and so to destroy it, and thus enjoy taking my revenge over what I loathed for holding me back from what I then thought was the proclaiming of the truth. It was during these dreadful struggles that I began to see that so-called hypnotism, autosuggestion, new-thought, and cultivation of a strong will, which I had previously learned, were not Christian Science, and must be put off. Many books on those subjects were then put in the fire. Then I saw that what I had taken such pains to cultivate, especially a strong will and quick retort, must be unlearned; and the truth of Mrs. Eddy's words in Science and Health (p. 234) was revealed: "We must begin with this so-called mind and empty it of sin and sickness, or sin and sickness will never cease. The present codes of human systems disappoint the weary searcher after a divine theology, adequate to the right education of human thought."

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