In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,"...

Julian St. John Wattley

In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," the textbook of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy writes (p. 213): "Every step towards goodness is a departure from materiality, and is a tendency towards God, Spirit. Material theories partially paralyze this attraction towards infinite and eternal good by an opposite attraction towards the finite, temporary, and discordant."We find that this was proved in the experience of the prodigal son as related in the parable in the Gospel of Luke, and we also find that it is true in the experience of each one of us today.

I first heard of Christian Science some forty years ago while at a boarding house. A woman told some of my fellow boarders and me that it was a religion of love, and she invited us to a Sunday service at a Church of Christ, Scientist. We attended the service, but not being ready for the blessing, I was not favorably impressed and found myself criticizing the reading of the Bible by a woman.

About four years later, after I had reached the very husks of materiality, my state of health was such that my application for life insurance was refused. My family, becoming alarmed, urged me to take a trip to the tropics. I was away for six months, following strictly a system of physical training. Upon my return to the United States, however, my condition developed into a nervous breakdown. It was then that I began to pray earnestly for guidance, and in three weeks' time the answer came through a friend who recommended that I go to a Christian Science practitioner. My healing was slow, but in about a year I was free and had a sense of peace which I had never before known. I again applied for insurance, and this time I was accepted without reserve by the same company which had previously rejected me.

In the years that followed I experienced many other physical healings through Christian Science. A case of blood poisoning was healed in one treatment. A high fever, induced by inoculations while in an Army encampment, vanished overnight. During World War I, while I was in France with the American Expeditionary Forces. I received a healing of influenza in one hour.

About two years ago I was awakened suddenly one night with a severe pain in my right side. The suggestion came to me that I would have to submit to an operation for appendicitis, but instantly an angel thought came to me in the words of the Bible (Hebr. 4:12), "The word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword." I telephoned a Christian Science practitioner, who gave me prayerful treatment, and I fell asleep shortly thereafter. When I awakened two hours later all the symptoms of the disease had disappeared. They have never returned.

I am very grateful for service in the Cause of Christian Science through membership in The Mother Church and a branch church, for the privilege of class instruction, and especially for an increased understanding of the Bible gained through the study of Science and Health and the other writings of our dear Leader, Mrs. Eddy. As a result of her consecrated life mankind is being led out of the bondage of material theories, which counterfeit the truths of divine Mind.—Julian St. John Wattley, New Rochelle, New York.

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