Testimony of Healing March 12, 1927 Issue

In July, 1919, my first healing came to me

Susan J. Remsen

In July, 1919, my first healing came to me. The five years before had been spent in suffering so great that death seemed to me much more desirable than life. Several kindly physicians had told me I was suffering from a nervous breakdown, and from two so-called incurable diseases. But I seemed to suffer most of all from an intolerable boredom, being bored by every circumstance of my life. My dearest friends, those whom I loved best, often bored me till I could hardly endure it. I was ashamed of this, and kept it from everyone about me. All my life I had been a serious student of the Bible, reading and studying it daily. But I was tired and bored even with the Bible, for many times I knew the next words without the turning of the page, and did not at all get their spiritual meaning. Once I said aloud, when alone in my room, "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?"

I had been a graduate nurse for years, believed strongly in medicine, and was taking various drugs daily, though I could see no improvement whatever in my condition. One day a friend offered to lend me "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, "so that I could see what it was all about anyway," as I said at the time. If anyone had asked me if I wished for help from Christian Science, I would have answered firmly, "No!" Taking the book home I went to my room, and after reading the Preface with interest, I noticed that the title of the first chapter was "Prayer." I had been a member of an orthodox church for years, but secretly I knew that whenever I had tried to pray I had only uttered words. So I eagerly began the chapter to see what was going to be said about prayer. I read every word of it without stopping; and when I looked around my familiar room I was as one awakened from a dream! An inner voice said to me, "Arise, shine; for thy light is come." I knew that call was for me. A heavy, dark cloud seemed lifted from me, and I was in a glow of light and love. I seemed "absent from the body, and ... present with the Lord," indeed. I was so happy, so free from the thought of and the longing for death! Boredom vanished. From that day all medicine was discarded. I have nearly worn my Bible out, so much do I love to read and study it. Not one of the supposed symptoms of the two incurable diseases has ever appeared since that blessed day.

Science and Health is the daily, hourly guide to my Bible studies and my daily living. With joy do I prove the efficacy of Truth for myself, and for others when requested to do so. My life is full of interest; I feel as if it had just begun. My gratitude to God, to our great Way-shower, Christ Jesus, and to Mrs. Eddy, it is not possible to express in words. I strive to prove it by right thinking and right living—by loving my neighbor as myself.

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