Testimony of Healing February 21, 1931 Issue

My earliest impression of Christian Science was that it...

Francine Millier

My earliest impression of Christian Science was that it was a religious fad which responsible people had nothing to do with; so when I resorted to it for help I did so because all other remedial sources had failed.

All my life I had been in bondage to some sickness and desperately unhappy in my environment, so that when I was quite young I became reconciled to the belief that I was going into an early decline, and I accordingly prepared to die. To this end, I examined all the religious tracts and books dealing with the herafter that I could find. I read the Bible voraciously, and was also attracted to a discarded copy of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, which had been left in the mining camp where I then lived. As I had very little formal academic or religious training, these two volumes were a source of great mystery to me, for I believed that heaven and hell were localities, and that when one died, if one had been good, one flew to the former. This was a journey I expected any day to take. But I did not die; I suddenly became well! How or why I did not know.

However, there must have been seeds of Truth sown in my consciousness, for a few years later, while living in Massachusetts and afflicted severely with dysentery and anæmia, I remembered something of Christian Science, but not until the physicians of a prominent sanitarium had exhausted their means in their effort to cure me. Their methods had only succeeded in reducing me to a state of weakness. As there was no improvement, it was decided that I should come home. Then, being like the woman who "had suffered many things of many physicians ... and was nothing bettered," I decided to look in The Christian Science Journal for a practitioner's name. I selected a name and one day went to see the practitioner. After a few treatments I was healed. I regained my normal weight and ate anything I liked. Later, when living in the West, I was greatly distressed and agitated to note a swelling in my throat. As I had at that time a close friend and a Swiss maid both afflicted with goiter, I feared it, and consulted a friendly physician. He pronounced it a goiter and said an operation would be necessary in six months. I was disconsolate at the verdict. Remembering the former healing, which had taken place with so little effort on my part, I again consulted a Christian Science practitioner, and was healed in a few treatments.

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