Testimony of Healing September 10, 1927 Issue

In the spring of 1905, I attended a Wednesday evening...

In the spring of 1905, I attended a Wednesday evening testimony meeting at The Mother Church, but was far from satisfied that what I had heard was for me. In 1913, after attending a Sunday morning service in another Christian Science church, and mainly to please friends who were Scientists, a copy of the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, was purchased. I merely looked into it and rejected the teaching. I little realized that it was my own blindness and dullness of hearing which on two occasions had caused me to reject this "pearl of great price."

Three years ago, after I had built up a successful business, after I had reached a point in life where the material future seemed certain, after I had begun to look upon myself as a self-made man, I suddenly awakened to the fact that I had lost my business and the money I had made; that I was heavily in debt and without income; that I had no position and small likelihood of rehabilitating my business; and that my seeming certainty regarding the future was a myth. At the time, I was recovering from the effects of two severe illnesses and three surgical operations. I was also a user of alcohol, and took powerful drugs nightly for chronic constipation and insomnia. I was, figuratively, at the end of my rope, and it seemed more desirable to let go than to hang on. Religion had never meant anything to me from the standpoint of its practical help.

In passing a store one day in the city in which I then lived, I noticed a card announcing a lecture by a member of the Board of Lectureship of The Mother Church. Like a drowning man grasping at a straw, I went to that lecture. On this, the third occasion of my listening to it, the gospel of Christian Science struck me so forcibly that the thought of rejecting it never occurred to me. The premises logic, and conclusions of the lecturer were so sound that I was attracted to the philosophy advanced as iron is drawn to a magnet. Truly, "man's extremity is God's opportunity."

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