Testimony of Healing January 21, 1939 Issue

My gratitude for Christian Science is deep, because it...

George Channing

My gratitude for Christian Science is deep, because it turned the course of my life from hopelessness and the self-destroying conduct which hopelessness engenders and made me certain of man's unlimited usefulness for good.

Although I came out of the university and two subsequent years of postgraduate work with some measure of idealism still prompting me, I was nevertheless a disappointed young man. It seemed to me that the somewhat extensive search to which I had devoted myself for a satisfying philosophy of life or, more accurately, a key to true spiritual living, had been fruitless. I had found nothing that supplied any evidence that good is real or is worthy of one's aligning oneself with it, despite my rather intense desire to do so. Even religion had seemed to fail me. For I had investigated religion pretty thoroughly without being able to form an opinion that it offered anything of truly practical benefit to meet immediate human needs. At least, I thought I had investigated thoroughly, for I had been urged on by a desire to accept an offer of financial aid adequate to prepare me to become a clergyman. I began then to discard my hope of working sincerely for moral and spiritual ideals and came to accept the notion that one might as well cultivate sensuous appetite and indulge it, particularly the appetite for strong drink; and I put the notion into effect.

In this state of mind I went as an American soldier to France during the World War, leaving a bride of three months, who was subsequently to have an experience that would lead to the fulfillment of my quest for the true religion. While I was away, she and also her young nephew were promptly and completely healed by Christian Science of influenza, during the devastating epidemic of that disease in 1917. These Christian Science healings were especially emphasized in her thought by the fact that a beloved brother had just passed on with the same disease under medical treatment.

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