SOWING "BESIDE ALL WATERS."

F. H. PARDOE.

In humble gratitude for a new understanding of God as only good, and for many personal healings and other blessings, I add this statement of what even a slight understanding of Christian Science has accomplished, in the hope that it may help to establish the reign of peace and harmony in some other home.

About the first of February, 1909, while on a railway train between my home city and a small town where my business takes me every few days, I saw a boy of fourteen years carrying his sister of six years, who was badly deformed and seemed very ill. Their appearance suggested misery and abject poverty, and there were few dry eyes in the car as I made inquiry regarding them and learned that their home was on rented land out from a neighboring town, and the mother a widow with seven children. It seemed that they were in very reduced circumstances, but a relative in Milwaukee had furnished a small amount of money to help the mother to try a certain treatment in my home city for this little girl.

I learned later that this trip was the last they expected to make, as the money had been exhausted, but not knowing it at the time, the next day I sent an employee to their home with clothing, that the child might be more warmly clad. He reported her condition as "very bad;" that the doctor had been there just before him, and had said on leaving that the child had but a short time to live. About a week later, however, learning that she was still living, I went to see her, accompanied by the employee before referred to. We took with us other bodily comforts, remembering Mrs. Eddy's statement on page eight of our text-book, "If we turn away from the poor, we are not ready to receive the reward of Him who blesses the poor." We found the child as she had lain for several days, having had one nervous spasm after another, but she did not have any more for over three months after that visit, and then only infrequently for a day or two.

As I assured this little sufferer that God never made any one sick, that He did not want her to be sick, but that He did want her to be well, it was like a burst of sunshine to her, and her face became illumined with the "radiance of Soul" (Science and Health, p. 247). I had studied Science and Health with the Bible for about four years, but had not received class instruction and was afraid I had not sufficient understanding to go on with the work. In a few days, however, I had an opportunity to talk the experience over with one of Mrs. Eddy's students in an adjoining state, and she pointed so clearly to God and His work that I was willing to trust to Him and continue to help the child.

Each visit to her finds some improvement, but, owing to the eleven-mile drive at each trip, I have not been able to see her more than once every four or five weeks, and it has often been difficult to understand or to be understood, as the mother speaks but little English and the children imperfectly. Together with this help, there has come to the child the perfect healing of an aggravated bowel disorder. Recently I met, for the first time since taking up the work for her, the kind-hearted physician who had despaired of her life and who also was present when she was operated on prior to 1909. He had heard of the help she was receiving, and (unsolicited) informed me of his surprise at her healing, and also told me of the operation which she had undergone. He said that the doctors had found a large abnormal growth back of her brain, but had decided it was not safe to remove it, although they felt sure that this growth would permanently prevent the development of the left side of her body.

When my friends tell me they are opposed to Mrs. Eddy and to Christian Science, my reply is that they are only opposed to that of which they think her work and Christian Science consists; while we who have received the blessing of Christian Science, exclaim with the psalmist, "Who is so great a God as our God!"

[The statement which follows is from Mrs. Augusta Flieht, Edgar, Wis., the mother of the child mentioned above, and is translated from the German.—Editor.]

It is with a grateful heart that I wish to tell in a few words what Christian Science has done for my little daughter. Although she had been under medical treatment for several years, it all was in vain. An operation was performed, but the condition did not improve; it grew worse, the physicians claiming that a growth had formed in the brain. The whole left side was paralyzed, and the left leg was several inches shorter than the other and distorted. The left arm, too, was twisted around. Then she met a Christian Scientist on the train on her way home from the physician's. A few days later this Scientist came to see us, and talked to us about Christian Science; and since that hour my child has been improving. The leg which was shorter and twisted around has got into its natural position, and is now not over half an inch shorter than the other. She has been attending school half a mile away, since September, and although it seemed hard for her to learn at first, she now understands pretty well. She plays with the other children at school, and takes an active interest in all that is going on. In view of the great improvement which has taken place, we believe that she will be restored within a short time, and we are very thankful to God for all the good that has come to us through Christian Science.

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UNITY WITH THE READERS

June 25, 1910

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