Testimony of Healing December 19, 1942 Issue

My coming into Christian Science...

Anetta G. Schneider

My coming into Christian Science covers a period of many years. I was reared in a religious home where the Bible was read daily, and regular church attendance was a natural part of our lives. As I matured into young womanhood, I was accepted as a member of the church and took a wholehearted interest in its affairs. While I shall always be grateful to these sincere people for their well-meaning efforts in behalf of humanity, this doctrine taught of a future-world salvation, and when I went out into the world on my own I found I had nothing dependable upon which to rely for the solution of everyday problems. Consequently, after much stumbling around and several bitter experiences, and by this time a very much bewildered and defeated person, I put religion behind me as a subject not lending itself to reason or explication and most certainly not applicable as a means of pointing a way out for me in my human difficulties. My ideals thus shattered, I had nothing to do with any church for several years.

But through the disappointments which belief of supposititious life in matter engenders, I was soon to be led "into the land of Christian Science, where fetters fall and the rights of man are fully known and acknowledged" (Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy, pp. 226, 227). My introduction to Christian Science came about when I was led to take a copy of the Sentinel out of a free literature distribution box in a railroad station in a far western city.

With the radiance of the vision which was given to me later through earnest study of Science and Health, the Christian Science textbook, I soon recognized my former defeats as steps on the way to spiritual ascendancy. My joy was unbounded when I found in this textbook satisfying explanations of hitherto unexplained theological points of religion. I shall always remember the first liberating light which illumined my thought when I learned that heaven and hell are states of consciousness rather than localities. Heaven indeed opened up to me then. At last I could square Jesus' teachings with practical reasoning and apply these teachings logically in immediate experience.

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