Testimony of Healing November 28, 1977 Issue

When Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy...

Alfio M. Carnesciali

When Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy was first given to me by my mother, I had never heard of Christian Science. Yet I had considerable suspicion and skepticism about a religion that would tie Science and Christianity together. Although my first efforts to read the book were undertaken to uncover what I thought would be the illogic and contradiction in its writings, something soon happened in my experience that compelled me to understand more the consistent logic of its wonderful teachings.

Shortly after I received Science and Health, an abdominal hernia became aggravated while I was playing football for a service team at a United States naval base, where I was attending electronics school. The condition was congenital. It had been medically confirmed by a physician before I went into the Navy. He had said I would have to be operated on before I reached a certain age, a period that has now long passed. The naval surgeon who examined me at the time of this aggravation of the condition also felt that an operation would be necessary. He agreed that it could be postponed for four months, when my schooling would be completed. It became immediately necessary for me to stop playing football.

As I did not desire to have an operation, I turned to reading Science and Health for comfort. I knew little or nothing of Christian Science practitioners, and my understanding of Christian Science itself was not only meager but confused. While it seemed I could glimpse, although slightly, the true world of Spirit, I found it difficult to drop the old concept of a world of matter. Yet the more I read, the more I wanted to understand. The first chapter, entitled "Prayer," was especially meaningful because it brought me back time and time again to a higher understanding of prayer. The result was that a complete healing of the hernia took place through spiritual means alone, and there was no need for an operation.

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Testimony of Healing

My first testimony appeared in The Christian Science Journal...