As a very young child, I first...

Doris Hartley

As a very young child, I first came in contact with Christian Science while visiting on a farm in Michigan. It was harvest time, and while jumping about in the haystack I landed on the end of my spine on the hard ground. The farm hands felt some concern about the fall, but I managed to get to the house, where loving consolation was given. A member of the family brought out the Bible and Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy. Not fully realizing what was being done, but feeling a great sense of peace and comfort, I shortly forgot my fall, arose, and went back to my play.

Years went by, and after graduating from college I again came in contact with Christian Science. During a week-end visit with a classmate I was most impressed with the joy, peace, and harmony expressed in her home. I commented upon this to my hostess. She accepted this comment in the quiet, loving, humble manner of all those who are sincerely striving to follow in the footsteps of Truth. I later learned that I had been visiting in the home of a consecrated Christian Science practitioner.

These two incidents are important in my testimony of sincere gratitude for Christian Science, because they are two of the many present-day illustrations of the truth mentioned in Paul's second epistle to the Corinthians (3:2, 3), "Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read of all men: forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart." They show how important it is that we so let our light shine that others may see it and be guided along their journey from sense to Soul.

This religion, which reveals the Principle that is at hand wherever one may be, brings great joy and contentment to those traveling in the foreign lands where churches are not available. My mother and I were in such a situation when we finally turned to Christian Science. Since becoming a member of The Mother Church, affiliating with a branch church and enjoying the privilege of activity in the latter, I have had numberous healings, including those of colds, a severe case of pneumonia, stomach disorders, and constipation from the time of birth. The constipation was overcome in one treatment by a Christian Science practitioner.

Besides the great blessing of physical healings, I am grateful beyond words for the spiritual freedom and mental peace which Christian Science has given me through the healing of an intense sense of bondage and fear of animal magnetism. It is with profound gratitude that I read all of the Lesson-Sermons in the Christian Science Quarterly, but I especially appreciate the one entitled "Ancient and Modern Necromancy, alias Mesmerism and Hypnotism, Denounced." As our Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, has written in Science and Health (p. 102), "Animal magnetism has no scientific foundation, for God governs all that is real, harmonious, and eternal, and His power is neither animal nor human."

Through the consecrated reading of the Bible and the writings of Mrs. Eddy and daily study of the Lesson-Sermons, one is protected. At one time when my work took me around a city making calls, it was my privilege and joy to experience a definite proof of God's protection. On one of these calls, after parking my car in a driveway and returning from my call to the car, I climbed into the driver's seat. When I had started the car and released the brake in preparation for backing out of the driveway, the still, small voice guided me to get out of the car and walk around to the rear, where I found a little child playing in the driveway with her back against the rear tire of the car. As the child looked up from her play and saw me she began to cry. Words fail to express the great flood of gratitude that came over me as I took the child in my arms and said, "God is Love." At once the crying ceased and all was well.

I am profoundly grateful to God for Christ Jesus, for Mrs. Eddy, and for the Christian Science practitioners, those loving disciples of Truth who do so much toward guiding us on the upward way. For the privilege of teaching in the Christian Science Sunday School and of serving in the Reading Room, I am humbly grateful. As the Psalmist sang (Ps. 43:3), so do I sing, "O send out thy light and thy truth: let them lead me; let them bring me unto thy holy hill, and to thy tabernacles."—(Miss) Doris Hartley, Wauwatosa, Wisconsin.

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