I wish to express my deepest gratitude for the gift of God, revealed to us by Mary Baker Eddy. I am talking about Christian Science. I am very grateful for the love and caring I have had from the Sunday School teachers who have shown me what Christian Science can mean to my life.

I would like to tell of a healing I had when I was twelve. The public school system in our area requires an eye test every year. When I had gone into the nurse's office before, she had always recognized me as being a Christian Scientist and had very politely excused me from the test.

Then I changed schools, and there was a different nurse giving the eye tests, who didn't know I was a Christian Scientist. She gave me the test and a note to give to my parents saying that my eyesight was not perfect, and I should be taken to an optometrist for a better examination.

My parents and I talked about this letter, and I said that I would like to have a Christian Science practitioner help me solve the problem. In reality the eye condition was nothing, but I had to prove it was nothing.

When I went to the practitioner's office she told me to think of how man was created. In Christian Science we learn man was created perfect, the spiritual image and likeness of God. She also said that it would be a good idea to look up in Science and Health the definition of "eyes." There Mrs. Eddy says in part (p. 586): "Eyes. Spiritual discernment,—not material but mental." We thought this statement over and what it meant to me. I reasoned that spiritual discernment was understanding, seeing clearly the real idea of man, spiritual and perfect. The practitioner helped me see that spiritual good could not be truly seen with matter. I had to see spiritually, and so my thought must not be filled with resentment, hate, or unkindness.

As I understood this, I had fewer arguments with my brother and had less resentment toward my parents. In one week I felt I had cleared my thought. And as a result I had my healing.

I went to the optometrist who tested me and found my vision was no less than perfect. (This was confirmed in a recent examination for a driver's license when I was told I had 20/20 vision.) I took the nurse a note from the optometrist saying I had perfect vision. She showed an interest in Christian Science, so I gave her a copy of Science and Health and some current Christian Science periodicals.

Nicholas D. Udall
Darien, Connecticut

My first copy of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mrs. Eddy was inscribed on the flyleaf: "With love, Mother and Daddy, December, 1927."

My mother had become interested in Christian Science because of the healing of my sister of whooping cough at the age of five months. I was then five years old and was transferred from a Protestant Sunday School to a Christian Science Sunday School.

A few years later I received my own copy of Science and Health, taking it to Sunday School each week with its companion, the Bible. From the very beginning I loved these books and what they stand for. At age eleven I had the opportunity to choose for myself whether I wished to be a Christian Scientist.

That summer my body, from the waist down, was covered with boils. Despite faithful prayer by my parents and treatment from a Christian Science practitioner, the boils continued to appear, although the pain was healed immediately. A relative who was opposed to Christian Science had been filling my ears with falsehoods about Mrs. Eddy. She had told me that when I was eighteen years of age I could choose for myself which church I wished to attend. She had made me promise not to tell my mother the things she was relating to me.

This disturbed me very much, as I had always been taught not to break a promise; and I asked my mother whether it was right for me to keep a secret from her. When she assured me I could tell her what was troubling me, very much relieved, I poured the stories out to her. After we discussed this together, she told me I did not have to wait until I was eighteen to make my choice. She handed me my Bible and Science and Health and told me to go to my room and pray, saying she would abide by my decision. She would take me to a doctor, if I decided that was what I wanted; and I could attend whichever Sunday School I wished.

I went to my room and opened Science and Health to one of my favorite passages (p. 516): "Love, redolent with unselfishness, bathes all in beauty and light." And further in the same paragraph: "The sunlight glints from the church-dome, glances into the prison-cell, glides into the sick-chamber, brightens the flower, beautifies the landscape, blesses the earth. Man, made in His likeness, possesses and reflects God's dominion over all the earth. Man and woman as coexistent and eternal with God forever reflect, in glorified quality, the infinite Father-Mother God." I knew instantly that I wanted to be a Christian Scientist and nothing else.

The boils dried up immediately, and the healing was so complete that there was never a rift in my love for this relative nor in our family's harmonious relationships. I joined The Mother Church at the age of fourteen, and a branch church at sixteen.

After graduation from college I was married to a military officer. His experiences overseas during World War II gave me many opportunities to prove at home that Christian Science overcomes loneliness, fear, doubt, lack of income, and supplies any other need. After my husband had been overseas a few months, he was seriously wounded in the chest and told that he would never fly again. In two months he was healed by Christian Science treatment and returned to his group at the front.

Then, eight months later, he was shot down by enemy aircraft and reported missing in action. His plane was seen to go down in flames and his group commander wrote to me that he saw no way my husband could have escaped alive. As always, I turned to Science and Health for healing and found my answer (p. 298): "What is termed material sense can report only a mortal temporary sense of things, whereas spiritual sense can bear witness only to Truth." My thought was illumined as I realized that the report of my husband's being missing in action was only the report of the "mortal temporary sense of things." I was so completely healed that some members of the family felt that I was unable to see the seriousness of the situation.

Each morning, as I prayed for my husband, I knew through that same illumination of spiritual sense that he was alive. And so I was not surprised but joyous when in three months a letter came from him in his own handwriting. He had been a prisoner of the enemy, and had undergone many hardships; but he was alive. After the war he flew jet fighter planes.

It is not difficult to see why Christian Science has been a daily companion to me for all these years. I am grateful for every opportunity to serve the Cause of Christian Science.

(Mrs.) Virginia L. Hoffman
South Laguna, California