I had been brought up always to say prayers before going to sleep. After marrying a Christian Scientist, I continued my custom of quietly reciting prayers which, after the birth of our second child, included a request that God would reveal to us to which denomination we should all belong in order that we might be united in worship. I did not then know this: "Desire is prayer; and no loss can occur from trusting God with our desires, that they may be moulded and exalted before they take form in words and in deeds" (Science and Health, p. 1). After we moved to another district, my wife began taking our children to a Christian Science Sunday School.

One Sunday morning some time later, I had the desire to go to church with my wife and the children. I listened carefully to the Lesson-Sermon, and at the end of the service was very impressed by the obvious logic of "the scientific statement of being." Soon I knew that God had answered my prayer, and from that time adopted Christian Science as my religion. I was later to read, "And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart" (Jer. 29:13). Eventually I began to study the Lesson daily.

At that time I had been suffering for years from sinusitis, and was never without a nasal decongestant handy. My doctor had understandingly informed me that he also suffered from this and that there was no known cure. I was so new to Christian Science that I did not realize I could pray for myself or get a practitioner to treat that supposedly incurable disease. However, I continued to study the Lesson.

Then one morning, as I was blowing my nose, something came away, and my wife pointed out that she felt it was evidence of a physical healing taking place.

Whenever I flew down from the high altitude of Johannesburg to the coast, sinusitis would come on immediately. The next time I was on a flight, I had another attack. But, having read or heard that "in Christian Science there is never ... a return to positions outgrown" (Science and Health, p. 74), and having then learned that people were cured just by studying the Bible and Science and Health, I humbly prayed. The next morning I considered the passage from Acts in which Peter said to Aeneas, "Jesus Christ maketh thee whole" (9:34), and the words came to me vividly, "and you too." The trouble cleared entirely there and then. That was over thirty years ago. It has never returned. During the subsequent years I had healings of influenza and diarrhoea, with the help of practitioners.

At some time a rather large lump developed under my tongue. Whenever it troubled me, I simply refused to accept it as reality, on the basis that "being is holiness, harmony, immortality" (Science and Health, p. 492), and that therefore any inharmony must have no reality. After I began doing this, one day this lump fell off.

Years later I sustained a deep gash in my leg. Had I still been relying on medical means for healing, I would most certainly have gone to a doctor for stitches. Instead, my wife washed the wound and bandaged it. Then I began to claim for myself that beloved truth from Science and Health "Accidents are unknown to God, or immortal Mind, and we must leave the mortal basis of belief and unite with the one Mind, in order to change the notion of chance to the proper sense of God's unerring direction and thus bring out harmony" (p. 424). I saw clearly that the accident had indeed never happened. It took a few weeks of persistently claiming spiritual truths in prayer, but the wound was completely healed.

Science and Health has taught me how to think clearly and truthfully.

Albert S. Bridger
Bromhof, Republic of South Africa

As the wife of the testifier, I can add that his healing of sinusitis meant a great deal to the family; when the condition was healed, so were his accompanying tension headaches. My husband gradually became more even-tempered, and easier to get along with.

Avice D. Bridger