Testimony of Healing January 8, 1979 Issue

Even though I grew up in a family of Christian Scientists...

William G. Hewitt

Even though I grew up in a family of Christian Scientists and attended a school and camp with children of the same background, for many years after leaving school I treated Christian Science only as a pleasant philosophy. I told myself (and others) that there were things about Christian Science I couldn't buy. But I did buy surgery, medicine, social drinking, and worldly conformity as routes to health and a satisfying career. The preoccupation with matter resulted in a confused, unsatisfactory personal life, until I finally realized I had to choose between continuing a total immersion in matter and turning to God for salvation.

I prayed the best I could and was inspired to look up a friend from school days, who, I recalled, was a Christian Science practitioner. She agreed to see me, and I discovered God's power in my life once more as I set to work studying the Bible and Mary Baker Eddy's writings. I began, for the first time, to make Christian Science my own. And the healings! Reliance on surgery and medicine and the desire for alcohol and tobacco left me immediately. I found Love could give "beauty for ashes of the vanished years" (Christian Science Hymnal, No. 412) in a whole new family life built on a spiritual foundation. I learned that as God's child I didn't have to suffer from gout or indigestion or headache. I found satisfying employment and sure protection. Fruitful activity in branch churches and the great blessings of class instruction followed. I recall how the words of that same hymn welled up in me: "O dreamer, leave thy dreams for joyful waking,/O captive, rise and sing, for thou art free."

And the words well up in me today out of undiluted gratitude for this remarkable scientifically Christian religion, demonstrated by Christ Jesus and explained by Mrs. Eddy.

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