My mother learned of Christian Science more than seventy years ago in Lynn, Massachusetts. She attended a Protestant church there. One Sunday a friend who had had a withered right arm and hand shook hands with her right hand. Greatly surprised, my mother asked, "What did it?" She was told, "Christian Science." She was given the name and address there in Lynn of a woman from whom she could buy a copy of Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy. Early Monday morning she purchased a copy and hurried home to read it.

At that time there was great unemployment in Lynn because of a financial depression. My mother and father left to go to a farm in another state. Mother was a serious Bible student, and with the precious copy of Science and Health she prayed and studied to learn how Christian Science heals. Life was not easy among strangers.

Eventually she became a practitioner. During my early childhood Christian Science services were held in our home in a small town.

Later a Christian Science church was established. Through my mother's consecrated work many people were blessed, and several were healed of tuberculosis, then prevalent in New England.

In our immediate family were many healings, among them a severe, painful case of eczema, hernia, cross-eye, bowlegs, burns, and grief. Unemployment and lack were replaced by interesting work and rewarding provision of needs and financial stability.

My husband passed on, and I returned to the East Coast to assume new responsibilites and the financial support of an older member of the family. This message from page 266 of Science and Health strengthened me: "Would existence without personal friends be to you a blank? Then the time will come when you will be solitary, left without sympathy; but this seeming vacuum is already filled with divine Love." This thought of no vacuum, place where God is not, turned my thoughts to God and His great love and care, and also to a greater appreciation of the love expressed around me. My grief was healed.

When I applied for work, there was a job waiting for me, due to my college training and previous work experience. I was very grateful for this. After a few months I was suddenly given a position of greater responsibility—engineering work, which had previously been held only by men. This work financially provided for our needs, and I held this position for ten years, until compulsory retirement.

I give credit to Christian Science for what people call my "remarkable good health." I live alone, but I am not lonesome. Serving in the local Church of Christ, Scientist, in various capacities—as an officer, a Reader, and in the Reading Room—gives me ample employment.

I thank Mrs. Eddy for having given us the rules, based on the teachings of the Master, Christ Jesus, and the Bible, for daily guidance and living according to God's laws of harmony. All her gifts are precious—her writings, the church organization, all the publications. The Christian Science Monitor was a special blessing to me when I lived outside the continental United States for years before the Second World War.

The fourth generation of our family is now attending a Christian Science Sunday School.

(Mrs.) Faith Walker Axtell
Montpelier, Vermont

In Miscellaneous Writings by Mrs. Eddy is the following sentence (p. 4): "All Science is Christian Science; the Science of the Mind that is God, and of the universe as His idea, and their relation to each other." For the past twenty years many blessings have poured into my life through the study and application of this remarkable, practical religion.

Both of the healings I will share are cases of mental surgery. The first took place shortly after the birth of our youngest child. When the child was several months old, as I was going about the normal work of a mother with a young family, something gave way in the lower part of my back, and I found myself in immediate and constant pain.

I was a fairly new student in Science and felt that I needed the help of a Christian Science practitioner. When the call was placed, the practitioner assured me that he would pray for me and that there was nothing to fear for God's love is always present. Shorty before this I had had the privilege of class instruction with a teacher of Christian Science, and this was my first opportunity since that time to apply me new understanding to attain healing.

For four days I struggled with the problem with little sign of progress or relief. On the fourth day I called the practitioner and reported in tears that the condition had not yielded. He asked me what I had been doing. I replied, "I've been denying and denying and denying the error." He replied, "Then stop denying and begin affirming!" I was momentarily hurt by this rebuke. However, it was exactly the correction that was needed, for I saw that the denial of error was only part of the work and had to be accompanied by strong affirmations of the healing truths of the perfect relation of God and man.

Once more I began to study the Lesson-Sermon in the Christian Science Quarterly, using the Bible and the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy. Only this time I affirmed—and firmly—every truth of God and man made in His likeness that I found, and there were many. I finished the lesson, and then slept deeply for several hours. When I woke, I was completely free.

The other healing was instantaneous. One night I noticed a small sore on my hip. I regret to say that at the time I did not do any corrective spiritual thinking but simply chose to ignore it. By morning it had grown to an alarming size and showed every evidence of being a carbuncle. My husband carried me downstairs, as I could only move about with great difficulty and the slightest movement caused much suffering. He then prepared our breakfast, took care of the children, and finally settled me into a chair with my Bible and Science and Health at hand so that I could spend some time quietly studying.

After he left for his office, I turned my thought to God and asked to be shown what I needed to know about this situation. Two healing thoughts came to me. The first is from the textbook (p. 463): "A spiritual idea has not a single element of error, and this truth removes properly whatever is offensive." As a student of Christian Science, I had learned that man is the spiritual idea of God, and that this applied directly to me. The second statement was from the Bible (Heb. 4:12): "The word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart."

These two truths so inspired me that I felt completely free. With that the growth opened, quickly drained, and disappeared. I was so totally free that I ran up the stairs to phone my husband and share the joy of this healing with him. Needless to say, we were both very happy and very grateful.

The blessings we have had in our home through the application of the truth in Christian Science have been many, and I say with a full heart that Christian Science has met every need.

(Mrs.) Amelia C. Rothrock
Erie, Pennsylvania