Testimony of Healing December 29, 1928 Issue

I am recording the following individual experience with...

John Garl Brown

I am recording the following individual experience with the earnest desire that it may be the means of helping others who have not yet started to walk in the Christian Science pathway, or perhaps of encouraging others who are farther along the road.

After retiring from an active business life in 1913, with sufficient property and capital apparently to live in comfort, I spent the following nine years trying to enjoy the fruits of my labor. But there was ever an aching void, a sense of unsatisfied desire, until in November, 1922, while in Miami, Florida, I had what was called a mental and nervous breakdown. I was so completely incapacitated that I was unable to attend to any personal or financial affairs, and my accumulated capital began to vanish like smoke into thin air. I was compelled to spend the following two years and six months in eight different hospitals and sanitariums in Florida, Illinois, and Colorado. During this time my mental and physical suffering was intense. I was examined by twenty-two doctors, specialists, and X-ray operators, and was relieved of a small fortune, but not of my troubles. The agony and suffering became so constant and so severe that the mystery was how it was possible for me to suffer so and yet live. I therefore tried on many occasions to end this mortal life, and finally, as a result of these repeated attempts, in November, 1923, I was sent to a hospital, where I remained until May 7, 1925.

I had now arrived at the very extreme of my extremity, so to speak. All was condemnation and darkness. False pride was crushed; and I was completely humiliated in the sight of former friends and loved ones. I had arrived at the point where I was not only willing but exceedingly anxious to know the truth; and all this proved to be a blessing in disguise, as it proved man's extremity to be God's opportunity, for God sent His ministering angels to me, one a loyal Christian Scientist and the other a little Christian Science book entitled "No and Yes" by Mary Baker Eddy. As I studied the book the spiritual light began to dawn; and while up early watching from my window, which faced the east, the breaking of the light of early dawn, seeing the wonderfully beautiful sun come forth in all its glory, I was holding fast and definitely to the condensed statement of Truth as expressed in the last two pages of the dear little book just referred to. One of these statements, quoted by Mrs. Eddy, was that "'one on God's side is a majority;'" the other, by our dear, loving Saviour, "Lo, I am with you alway." As I humbly accepted these wonderful statements in simple faith as being true, the terribly heavy burden of sin and false concepts, which had been crushing the life out of me, simply rolled away, or vanished as definitely and as completely as darkness vanishes before the rising sun. And then I remembered that the Psalmist had said, "As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us"—which means forever.

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Testimony of Healing

I am filled with profound gratitude to God for Christian Science