Testimony of Healing April 23, 1932 Issue

It is with a heart filled with gratitude for Christian Science...

Martha Stoddard Schouman

It is with a heart filled with gratitude for Christian Science that I write this testimony. This truth, as taught by Mrs. Eddy, was presented to me at a time when my need was very great. My little daughter had not been well from birth, and at the age of two years and a half her condition was pitiful. The very best medical advice obtainable had not brought about a healing, and an operation for enlarged tonsils and diseased adenoids had been decided on as the only thing that held out any hope. Before the time set for the operation arrived, a kind neighbor urged me to see a Christian Science practitioner, and although with very little confidence that good could come of it I consented to do so. I shall never forget that first visit to the practitioner. Her faith and the loving way in which she assured me that "with God all things are possible" gave me hope and courage, and treatment was taken up at once. Material means were discarded, and in two weeks all the evidence of the disease had vanished, and my child was free.

Words can never express how I felt about this; I was so uplifted and so happy I could think or talk of nothing else. One day, while I was trying to express my wonder and gratitude to the practitioner, she said, "Now you must begin to try to understand that nothing has happened." I was willing to be obedient to what she told me to do, although I did not understand what she meant; but I was to know later. Occasionally, when certain conditions appeared to exist, I would detect a trace of the old trouble in my child, but with a little help it would quickly disappear. This went on for about five years, when suddenly, like a flash of light, one day as I was thinking about what the practitioner had said to me I saw what she meant. Of course nothing had happened; God's child had never been sick. "The real man cannot depart from holiness," Mrs. Eddy says in our textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 475). I had touched "the hem of Truth's garment" (ibid., p. 170), and never since then have those symptoms appeared.

I am very grateful for all that Christian Science has done for me and is doing for all the world, grateful for our marvelous textbook, for our Church Manual, and for every piece of our literature. I am grateful for membership in The Mother Church and a branch church, and for class instruction. Christian Science is indeed the "pearl of great price," and I thank God for it and for its Discoverer and Founder, Mary Baker Eddy.—(Mrs.) Martha Stoddard Schouman, Flint, Michigan.

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