Testimony of Healing May 28, 1932 Issue

When I was a young girl I was fond of the Russian...

Eugénie de Schneeuhr

When I was a young girl I was fond of the Russian saying that each one is the blacksmith (forger) of his own happiness. As a matter of fact, I was exceedingly happy, and success accompanied me in every line, so that I could have said with the writer of the book of Ecclesiastes, "Whatsoever mine eyes desired I kept not from them." All this wonderful "luck," as I then termed it, I attributed to my own personality. One day, on returning home after my travels, I found to my great astonishment that someone had placed on the cupboard in my room an alabaster statuette of a blacksmith with anvil and hammer. He was headless, his head having been placed on the ground by his feet. I never found out who had played this joke upon me; but much later, when I came into Christian Science following the entire collapse of all my material happiness, my thoughts traveled back to this incident and I realized how wonderfully it symbolized that which had come to me. Through Christian Science we awake to find that truly "the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God." Jesus said, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do."

When first I heard of Christian Science I was a constant sufferer from a nervous stomach trouble. I scoffed at Science, saying that it was absurd to think that people in the twentieth century could believe in healing through prayer. The next time Christian Science crossed my path it was through the healing of an acquaintance of spinal paralysis. Despite my skepticism about Christian Science, here was a fact before my eyes, and I was bound to ponder it. My hour, however, had not yet come. Still later, during days of great stress, when I contemplated taking my own life, a kind woman, till then unknown to me, read the sadness in my face and said to me suddenly, "Do you know that God is Mind and Mind is All?" Intrigued by these words, I accepted an invitation to visit this lady, and there again I heard of Christian Science. The definition of God as Mind was to me a great revelation. It unfolded a new vision of religion and satisfied my reason. I saw, as Mrs. Eddy writes, how "reason and revelation were reconciled" (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 110). I was simply amazed that it had never occurred to me to consider the nature and character of thinking, and that our thoughts could have an influence on our lives and health.

Very soon after this a loving practitioner put a Bible and a copy of Science and Health into my hands. When I returned home I opened the Bible, and my eyes fell on this passage: "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." I sank on my knees sobbing as a child does in the arms of a loving mother. How often have I thought of this wonderful hour when reading those inspired definitions of baptism in "Pond and Purpose" (Miscellaneous Writings, pp. 203–207)!

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