Testimony of Healing April 12, 1930 Issue

When Christian Science was first brought to my notice...

Herbert Southwell with contributions from Catherine Southwell

When Christian Science was first brought to my notice I was a long way from the kingdom of heaven. Its message came to me like water to the desert—the desert of material beliefs.

Paralyzed in my left leg, left arm, and tongue, my speech being so very indistinct that even those who were constantly in my presence had to ask me to write down what I was striving to say; a heavy smoker both day and night; profane in thought when I was no longer able to be profane in speech; bearing thoughts of malice, vengeance, and hate toward people whom I thought had done me injury; suffering from weak eyes, caused by gas poisoning during the war, for which at times I had to wear smoked glasses or sit in a darkened room; my home broken up, and my wife having to go out as "daily help" to earn food for the children and for me—a battered wreck on the shore of time, I dragged my days along in misery.

Six medical practitioners and three specialists told me that I would probably never regain the full use of my limbs, that no treatment they could give me would be of any lasting use, and that I would be very lucky indeed if I did not get worse. I am very grateful to those people for their kindly ministrations. They did everything for me that materiality could do; but the Christian Science answer to their ultimatum is that I can now do a hard day's work without the aid of either crutch or stick, and can run with freedom. I thank God for His wonderful goodness in placing me in touch with a practical religion; for the guidance of the authorized literature; for the Christliness of purpose of those faithful friends who first took me by the hand, led me on to the pathway of spiritual understanding, and helped me to cut loose the millstone of despair; and also for "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, that beautiful lighthouse of comfort, whose beams first pierced the darkness of my material thinking.

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