Testimony of Healing October 23, 1978 Issue

Recently I attended a Wednesday evening testimony meeting...

James Pressley

Recently I attended a Wednesday evening testimony meeting in the branch church where I first learned the rudiments of Christian Science. The readings that evening were focused on freedom, and this, combined with my joy to be in the long-familiar edifice, gave me a new insight into the good influence this particular congregation had had on me when I was taking my first independent steps in Christian Science.

Although I had been raised in Science, my own uncertain understanding caused me to drift away from its teachings during my early years of high school. I began smoking cigarettes in the eighth grade, daily smoking marijuana in the ninth grade, and by the time I was halfway through the tenth year of school I had experimented with virtually every form of "high" that then existed. I became emaciated. In the words that Shakespeare gave to Richard II, I could have said, "I wasted time, and now doth time waste me."

I could have said this, could have chosen to resign myself to total apathy, but I did not. What was my alternative? I threw my collection of "pot" pipes into the garbage can and read the first chapter of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy—the chapter "Prayer." Within a few weeks I had progressed to the chapter "Science, Theology, Medicine," and a pack or two of cigarettes also awaited the trash collectors.

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For four or five years I had been suffering with sciatic rheumatism
October 23, 1978
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