Testimony of Healing January 18, 1930 Issue

My grateful acknowledgment of debt to Christian Science...

Verne E. Taylor

My grateful acknowledgment of debt to Christian Science is long overdue. Truly the advent into my experience of this beneficent, healing religion illustrates the Psalmist's declaration that God "redeemeth thy life from destruction," for the destruction of peace, joy, and hope had been wellnigh accomplished, owing to beliefs and fears of a supposed existence without God; and self-destruction had begun to present itself to my thought as a fitting termination to a weary and purposeless existence. A high-strung and temperamental constitution, fostered and nourished by an unrestrained self-will, had culminated in a complete nervous collapse.

The message of Truth was most lovingly offered by a friend of my mother, and in sheer desperation I seized upon it. On the invitation of this dear one I attended a Christian Science lecture; and though my thought was so disturbed and filled with anxiety that I gave attention to not more than a half dozen sentences of the entire discourse, yet so mighty is the Word of God that the truth enunciated at that lecture did its silent work even when the human voice was unheard. I returned home resolved to obtain a copy of "that book," even the name of which I had not learned. The following day I secured my first copy of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, and commenced to read it avidly. Twelve hours daily and more were spent upon its study; and with only an occasional gleam of heartening hope, but with a firm determination to stay with it until I had given it a thorough try-out, I read doggedly on. Weeks passed before I could be certain of any definite gain, but the start had been made; and with continued right effort progress was inevitable. Gradually some sense of security in God's care began to displace the old wearing sense of anxiety without Him, and in three months I was sufficiently improved to be able to resume the business position which I had been compelled to resign a year and a half previously. The Bible, which had been a closed book to me ever since, as a child, I had left the so-called orthodox Sunday school, had become an invaluable source of strength and encouragement.

At this time thought was opened to the advisability of having assistance from a Christian Science practitioner, a step which I had heretofore stoutly resisted; and through the loving and tireless efforts of a consecrated worked the old errors, fears, and limitations began one by one to loosen their hold, until at length I was restored to normal, happy, purposeful living. During this process of reconstruction more than one error just faded out of the picture, without conscious effort having been made to overcome it. One of these was constipation, for which I had used drugs almost daily for many years. Another was fainting spells which had formerly occurred, often at the most inconvenient times and places, during a period of years. To enumerate all the blessings which Christian Science has brought into my life would require more than the entire space allotted for testimonies in this publication; but there is at least one more without which this recital would be incomplete. I refer to the healing of the use of a drug. For five years I had been using this drug, in ever increasing quantity, for the relief of sick headache. At the time Christian Science came into my life I was using six times the amount that had been prescribed to me as the maximum that could be safely employed, and was at that time contemplating the adoption of a more powerful drug. When I consider the proportions which this habit had already attained, and the course which it would almost inevitable have followed but for the intervention of Christian Science, I realize that I can never be too grateful for rescue from this enslavement alone. From the first day that I turned to Christian Science for help, not a grain of any drug has ever been in my possession, for I realized from the first that this Science was true, and that the only way to try it fairly was through the "radical reliance" upon Truth which our beloved Leader enjoins on page 167 of Science and Health. Bettered conditions, physical, mental, moral, financial; the privilege of membership in the Christian Science organization; class instruction with its attendant yearly Association meeting—all these Christian Science has brought to me; and for them I am grateful.

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