Testimony of Healing June 15, 1918 Issue

I turned to Christian Science several years ago, not for...

Edna Stetson with contributions from Alice M. Jones

I turned to Christian Science several years ago, not for physical help, though there was great need of that, but for the overcoming of grief, for something to enable me to go on living. Outwardly, in the course of years, my life had readjusted itself so that it seemed normal to others, but in my thought always lurked the question, Why? Why need I go on living and suffering when there seemed to be no good, no purpose in life?

I know it was God's guidance that led me to a Christian Science practitioner. In the talk that followed I poured out the wretchedness of the years—the anguish and rebellion, the remorse and despair. I cast down my unbearable burden at the feet of the Christ, Truth, as made known to me in Christian Science, and was freed; for as spiritual reality was unfolded to me with great power and vividness, the gates of heaven—the doors of spiritual perception—swung open, and for the first time I saw with wonderful clearness the eternal truth: a God who is infinite Love, all good; the true, spiritual man created in His image and likeness; and a perfect, purely spiritual creation. I did not merely hope and trust and believe; I saw and understood—I knew. It would be called an instantaneous healing, I believe. It was the greatest proof that could be given me that Christian Science heals, for I knew that from the very nature of my trouble no material means would cure me.

On page 588 of our textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mrs. Eddy defines hell as "self-imposed agony." I saw this as I realized that the mental torture together with the physical suffering of all these years had, indeed, been self-imposed by my own ignorance of the truth about God and man, and life as it really is,—that the chains which had seemed to hold me in bondage had never been stronger than the strength of my own false belief in them. There have been many demonstrations of physical healing, but nothing compares with the spiritual healing and with the spiritual understanding coming to me through the study of Christian Science. During the four years since my healing I have been an earnest student of Christian Science, and find the truth taught therein a satisfying, never failing "well of water springing up into everlasting life." This past year has been a real test—a severe test, it has seemed—in almost every way; but by holding to spiritual reality I have been enabled to stand firmly on the rock, Christ. I have also received great physical healing, though this has come, and is coming, more gradually, for it has seemed to come almost wholly through my own understanding. During the past few months there has come a great increase of strength and endurance, for I am seeing more clearly that health is a spiritual quality—that it is wholeness, which is realized as we understand man's oneness with God. Once a delicate, extremely nervous, despondent creature, afflicted for years with the mental malady of melancholia, I am to-day an active, normal woman, able to do whatever is required of me, my days filled with work in the church, the study of Christian Science, and the many duties of a home maker.

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