Christian Science saved me from the life of inactivity threatened as a result of a complication of physical disorders. It was during World War II, while I was a patient in an Army hospital, that I was introduced to Christian Science. I had been hospitalized while serving as a combat engineer with the United States Army in Europe.

My condition was diagnosed as critical; I'd been suffering from yellow jaundice, pneumonia, pleurisy, and there were indications of tuberculosis. I was told it would be necessary for me to be in bed and inactive for several years. It was also predicted I would never again be able to drive a car or participate in any athletics. Since early boyhood I had been very active in this area, and I looked forward to continued participation. This information, along with the fear I had felt since I had been in combat, left me very depressed.

It was at this point that a Christian Science Wartime Minister found me. A relative, who strongly recommended Christian Science, had been given permission to arrange the visit. The Minister's first comment to me was bold and forthright in its truth: "It is not necessary for you to be in a hospital bed." This was in direct contradiction to the many statements I'd been hearing for several months. During his visits over the following months he would lovingly but firmly challenge my thought about myself; and he always left me with the positive assurance that my freedom from disease could be won. He also left me copies of the Bible and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy. I would awaken early in the morning and read Science and Health under the bed sheets before the others in the ward were awake. Mrs. Eddy's references to mortals' ignorance of their real state of being especially caused me concern. She says (Science and Health, pp. 560–561), "Ignorance of the divine idea betrays at once a greater ignorance of the divine Principle of the idea—ignorance of Truth and Love." But I gradually realized this was true.

After six months of hospitalization I was given an automatic medical discharge from the Army and sent to a veterans' hospital. Still hoping that institutionalized medicine could help me, I again found my physical condition did not improve. I then began an earnest study of this newfound truth. When not in my hands, the Bible and Science and Health were on the bed stand. Line by line, and step by step, I was gaining spiritual insight into the realities of God's perfect will for man.

A Christian Science practitioner agreed to help me, and I left the hospital. Upon returning home, with the continued prayerful treatment of the practitioner, and with deep study on my own part, the disease symptoms left me, naturally, as night gives place to day. In the Preface of Science and Health Mrs. Eddy states (p. xi), "The physical healing of Christian Science results now, as in Jesus' time, from the operation of divine Principle, before which sin and disease lose their reality in human consciousness and disappear as naturally and as necessarily as darkness gives place to light and sin to reformation."

In two months I returned to college and immediately started playing varsity basketball. At the same time I sent a letter to the Veterans Administration asking them to discontinue my disability compensation. In reply I was asked to report for a physical examination. After a full day of examination and after study of my thick medical file, the doctors said I was in excellent physical condition. Wishing me well, one of them added, "You are indeed lucky." Of course, I know that luck had nothing to do with my complete recovery. My healing came through Christian Science, from the operation of divine Principle, Love. The same divine and spiritual laws that Christ Jesus applied over nineteen hundred years ago are ever operative throughout all time and space.

For the last thirteen years I have been head basketball coach at the same college I attended after my healing over thirty years ago.

I am grateful for branch church membership and the opportunity to serve in various capacities, for Christian Science college organization membership, for membership in The Mother Church, and for class instruction.

Dean Alfred Sempert
Portland, Oregon