Testimony of Healing July 26, 1975 Issue

I don't know how to express the gratitude I feel in my heart for...

Richard Larry Herndon

I don't know how to express the gratitude I feel in my heart for Christian Science. It came into my life while I was in military service. I had been feeling low for quite some months. My military career up to that point had been a disaster. I could not seem to get along with any of my superiors while I was a Navy hospital corpsman, and my military performance grades were so low that I couldn't have received an honorable discharge at that time. One day while waiting for a bus to return to my base after a weekend leave, I took a Sentinel from a distribution box.

The Sentinel so interested me, particularly the testimonies of healing, that I got a copy of Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy, which was mentioned often in the Sentinel, from a local library. It is impossible to describe the exhilaration I felt as I read and became convinced of the efficacy of Christian Science. All desire for smoking and drinking, to which I was much addicted, was lost completely.

Within a few weeks I was transferred to the Hawaiian Islands, where I was to finish my military service. An encounter with a Marine sergeant, whom I had angered by inadvertently wandering into a noncommissioned officers' section, showed me how effective the Christian Science teaching can be when we turn from a material sense of man and see him as the perfect loving child of God. The sergeant apologized for the way he had acted. I could hardly believe my ears—a Marine sergeant apologizing to a subordinate! This demonstration gave me great confidence in how better to get along with others. Soon, without my solicitation, I was transferred out of active medical duties into an administrative position. My performance ratings so improved that the deficit of my earlier low grades was made up and I left military service when my full tour was up with an honorable discharge.

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Testimony of Healing
During my first semester of college my dormmates became deeply...
July 26, 1975
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