Article May 13, 1933 Issue

Scaling "the pinnacle of praise"

ALFRED PITTMAN

A COMPARATIVELY new student of Christian Science arrived in New York City early one Wednesday evening, after a year's absence. He had come, in part, for a business conference which promised to be interesting and productive, and which might be held at any time, day or evening, on short notice. There were old-time friends in the city, whom he wished to see. And there were theatrical plays that he desired to attend. It interested him to consider afterward, as a contrast with his practice before he knew of Christian Science, that without a thought of doing anything else he went directly from the train to the testimony meeting in a Christian Science church; and that he went through no sense of duty, but gladly, since it was for him the most attractive thing to do.

Great numbers of people have this feeling about the Wednesday evening testimony meetings in Christian Science churches, and it is easy to see the reason why. Is there, after all, anything in all human experience more interesting, more beautiful, or more important than what comes to light in these meetings? In them people, speaking directly from their own experience, tell of the disappearing of many types of so-called limitation through Christian Science. We hear of the appearing of God as the actual liberating power in human affairs, in accordance with the statement of Christ Jesus, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." And the interest and value of it all is heightened by the manifest fact that whatever anyone truly says in the meetings of his experience in Christian Science relates in its spiritual meaning not only to himself but to all who hear him. Witnessing to the healing power of Truth points to something that is true about man made in God's likeness, and to the complete liberation that is available for all mankind.

Take the content of a few typical testimonies in one of these meetings. A man told how he was healed of hatred and, along with it, of a chronic disease, through his increasing understanding of divine Love. A college student told of his release from fear in a college examination, and of the better-than-usual results he was enabled to obtain. A woman told of her complete and permanent healing twenty years before of what had been diagnosed as tuberculosis in an advanced stage. A man told how his little son's matter-of-fact statement of something he had learned in a Christian Science Sunday School—that God is All—so awakened his own thought that through the earnest, persistent study of the Bible and of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, he was healed of a disease of long standing. A woman, speaking with the quiet conviction that characterizes the testimonies in general, told how through reliance on God as the source of all strength and wisdom she had discovered capacities in herself, as God's witness, of which she had not before been aware, and was enabled to do work which was unfamiliar to her, but which it seemed her duty to do, and to do the work better than at first had seemed possible. One told, with manifestly deep gratitude, of securing a position; another, of the solution of a vexatious problem in a great industry—all through the understanding of God and man, as revealed in Christian Science.

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