Testimony of Healing October 17, 1936 Issue

For some time I have wanted to let all those who might...

Phoebe Roberts Hedrick

For some time I have wanted to let all those who might be interested know of the wonderful healing I have had in Christian Science. About four years ago I was the victim of carcinoma (cancer) and was pronounced incurable by the doctors and diagnosticians. In their judgment my expectancy of life was well within a year. I had been under their constant care for over a year, but the disease had progressed with great rapidity.

At that time I knew absolutely nothing about Christian Science, and believe that if anyone had advised it as a cure for my illness I should have thought it utterly impossible and should have resented the suggestion. One reason for my knowing that Christian Science is inspirational is that without any apparent thought from the outside I was impelled one night to telephone a Christian Scientist who was a friend. When she answered, I hardly knew what to say or why I had called her. She knew of my serious condition and asked if I wanted Christian Science help. I felt utterly hopeless; but after a brief conversation I said that she might call a practitioner, and in a few minutes I spoke to the latter myself.

The practitioner came the next day to see me, and I told her what was in my thoughts, even to the desperate contemplation of taking some tablets I had procured to put me to sleep, as I supposed, forever, in order that my family would not have to endure the presence of my terrible suffering much longer. The practitioner was deeply interested in all I said, but was not disturbed. When I had finished she asked me a simple question—if I had ever realized that we live in a world of pictured thought. The question was arresting, and it had never occurred to me before. She said she was not going to say that my present sense of body was not diseased and sick, but would ask me to lay that body aside, as it were, and let her help to change my concept of life, and thus my world of thought. Was I willing to try?

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