Since I was healed of consumption of the lungs simply...

Spencer E. Hollond

Since I was healed of consumption of the lungs simply by reading the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health by Mary Baker Eddy, without ever seeing or speaking to a practitioner, it is my great hope that this testimony will encourage those who seem unable to get help from others to realize that through the study of the textbook alone they can gain their freedom from sickness and sin.

Over twenty years ago I was a physical and mental wreck. I was suffering from consumption. On the advice of a medical specialist I went to live in sanatoriums in England and in Switzerland in search of health, but I did not improve. Being a soldier, at the end of one year I had to go before a medical board who would decide whether I should remain in the army or be retired. The specialist in Switzerland under whose care I was, gave me no hope. His verdict was that I must leave the army, and that if I lived in the open air I might exist for two or three years. Six weeks before I was due to go before the medical board, a friend lent me Science and Health and asked me to read it. I knew nothing about Christian Science, but I had not read much of this book before I realized that it was something for which I had been searching all my life, namely, a reasonable and logical Christianity. As I read, I began to understand something of what the Bible means, something of what Jesus means, something of his teaching and of his works, and this filled me with a peace and joy which I had never known before.

I was so absorbed and interested in this book that I ceased to think about my body or the disease. I had found a God whom I could understand. My one desire was to know more about this God, and I could scarcely stop reading Science and Health day or night. At the end of six weeks, just before my medical board examination, I went to see the medical specialist who originally had sent me to live in sanatoriums. To his amazement and mine, he could find nothing wrong with me. I had been healed simply by reading the book, and as proof of that healing I was passed by the medical board, returned to duty, and within a few years went out to the war in France and remained there from 1914 to 1918 without being wounded, sick, or sorry.

My healing was a wonderful experience, because I realized that if God could heal anything at all, then obviously God could heal everything. If the realization of the truth about God and man could heal an individual, then this same truth could heal the relations between capital and labor, could solve the problems of supply and unemployment, and all the troubles, both national and international, with which the world is confronted today; and finally I realized that the brotherhood of man, which I had always regarded as a pious hope, was and is a practical proposition.

All these problems have been made possible of solution by the steadfast devotion and unselfed love of our Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, who toiled unceasingly to give Christian Science to mankind.

General Spencer E. Hollond, London, England.

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