Testimony of Healing September 7, 1998 Issue

Prayer brings renewal and regeneration

Sinclair Atkins

I attended a Christian Science Sunday School for several years. But at the age of fifteen or sixteen, I decided that Christian Science was a lot of nonsense and that modern psychology and other intellectual subjects were more liberating. By the age of twenty-two or so, however, I found my life in ruins. I was unemployed, had wasted all the fine scholarly talents I was once thought to possess, had lost all my friends, and was the despair of my parents. I was, in fact, thoroughly miserable. Worse than this, I had come to the conclusion that there was something deeply wrong with me. I believed that I was spiritually sick.

As this conviction grew on me, I gave way to despair and began to contemplate suicide, but the thought of the misery that this would inflict on my mother kept me from it. Yet the more I searched my mind trying to find out what was wrong with it, the more I found nothing there. This reminded me of what I had been taught in Sunday School—that there was no mortal or human mind. I began to wonder if Christian Science might not have the answers, after all.

At last I decided to contact a Christian Science practitioner and obtained the address of one from a Christian Science Reading Room. When I climbed the stairs to his flat, I was certainly a picture of misery. He listened to my story with compassion and, to my intense relief, spoke no word of condemnation. Finally he said that what I needed was to be more aware of God. We talked further, and after a time he suggested that we pray together, and he closed his eyes. I was horribly embarrassed at first, but after a few minutes a great peace descended upon me.

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