For eight years I have been learning, through the teachings...

Ava H. Glisson

For eight years I have been learning, through the teachings of Christian Science, something of what Life is, and something of the meaning of Jesus' words, "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly."

Of the many blessings that have been mine, if I could tell of one more than another for which I am most grateful, I think it would be the healing of a very unhappy condition of thought I had lived in for more than fifteen years, which might be termed rebellion or resentment, because I felt that I had long suffered a great injustice. When I first heard of Christian Science I had also been a constant sufferer from many diseases for more than nine years; five of these years I was a helpless and almost hopeless invalid. Part of this time w/as spent in the hospitals and sanitariums where I had four serious surgical operations performed by some of the most noted surgeons in the South, but each operation seemed only to add new diseases and greater suffering, until I had despaired of ever being even relieved, much less well again, unless help could come through some other means than materia medica.

I had often told my father and friends that if I were ever cured it would be through divine power; so when I heard to Christian Science, and that it was curing sick people without medicine, I felt that possibly there was some hope for me, if I could only go to a Christian Scientist; but my father and all the family felt that this would result in failure as everything else had done, and they were very much opposed to my having anything to do with it. It was therefore through many trials and after several months of earnest prayer that God would provide some way or means through which I might learn something of this (to me) new religion, that the way was opened for me to go to a Christian Science practitioner, who was then in a neighboring town. It was she who first placed in my hands "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," and three days' reading of this book together with three silent treatments from this practitioner, transformed me into a new woman.

For years I had been able to walk only a few steps at a time, but on the third day of my investigation of Christian Science I walked more than a mile and returned the same distance without any suffering whatever. To be sure this was cause for rejoicing, and truly I did rejoice in my freedom from this bondage, but the greatest cause for rejoicing was my freedom from the bitterness and resentment that went out of my heart and life when I caught the first gleam of God as Love.

As I have said, I felt that I had for many years suffered a great injustice at the hands of a certain person, and, although I tried constantly to suppress the resentment, I felt there was, deep down in my heart, a sense of bitterness and revenge that I was not willing the world should know, and it was this that caused me much mental suffering before I ever knew what it meant to have a sick body. But when my bodily ailments were healed I found that this mental burden was also lifted, and the sense of love and peace that took its place cannot be described in words. As I learned more of Christian Science I soon began to see that it was no wonder that my body became diseased, neither was it any wonder that the body was made well when the hate and rebellion and resentment were blotted out of my thought—not suppressed, but cast out—by the coming in of divine Love that seemed to fill my whole being; and for this blessing I would give ceaseless praise to God for the understanding and realization, even in a small degree, that Life is Love, and Love is Life, and that this understanding shows us so plainly the difference between suppressing an evil and overcoming it, and how to overcome evil with good, hate with love. Then we begin to understand something of what our Saviour meant when he gave us the two commandements of Love, and said, "On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."

While I am thankful indeed that I have been able to gain, and manifest in my daily life even a little of this Love, my constant prayer is for more of the love that "thinketh no evil," for I now know that only through love can we know God, God is Love; and only through knowing or understanding God can we gain eternal life. Jesus said, "This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent."

Ava H. Glisson, West Point, Miss.

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