Mrs. Eddy says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures"...

Henri F. C. Berckenkamp

Mrs. Eddy says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 232), "Many theories relative to God and man neither make man harmonious nor God lovable." Not so very long ago I heard a preacher tell his audience that they did not come to church to understand God, but only to adore. Adoring without understanding—that was exactly what I had never been able to do, even when a boy. Moreover, I did not think that the unjust, revengeful God I was told about was lovable at all. So for about forty years I kept aloof from church and from what I thought Christian religion to be. Yet my so-called atheism did not prove satisfactory either; it left too many questions unanswered.

When I visited a Christian Science church for the first time I had heard something about this denomination, had even in a desultory way read pages of Science and Health, but I had refused the lovingly offered guidance of an experienced Scientist. In short, I was not really interested, and went only to please my wife, who had for some time attended regularly. After that first visit I continued to read, now and then going to church, but on the whole making little progress. But I was to receive my revelation. One Sunday in church something read by the First Reader about the omnipresence of Truth made me take notice. I knew in a flash that there must be exact truth somewhere and that, as it was not to be found in the physical world, it could only be ascertained metaphysically, and I felt that Christian Science might be the solution to my problem.

I shall not forget that moment. A strange sense of quiet came over me. I felt my generally stooping back straighten itself. From that day a number of minor ailments left me, such as weak stomach, continuous headaches, and insomnia. Previously I was not able to walk for a quarter of an hour without fatigue; now I can and do walk for hours at a stretch without the least discomfort. Of course, I have been a grateful student of Christian Science ever since.

There is more to relate, a blessed experience. All my life I had suffered from asthma. In the latter years scarcely a week had passed during which I did not have a more or less severe attack of that troublesome disease. As soon as I gained an inkling of the truth of Science I began to apply what I had learned and to a degree obtained results. Nevertheless, it seemed for a time that even the application of Christian Science would not wholly cure me. But it has done so. One night, on coming home after a Christian Science lecture, I had one of the severest attacks I can remember. It may have been what Mrs. Eddy has named "chemicalization." At any rate the illness left me suddenly and I felt that I was now completely healed. The symptoms have not recurred since then.

I am trying to express through this testimony my lively appreciation and deep gratitude for the Christian Science textbook and the other writings of Mrs. Eddy, for the church services, and for the Board of Lectureship, and the periodicals. I feel unbounded thankfulness for Mrs. Eddy's devoted life and work, which have enabled me, with thousands of others, to find the truth.—Henri F. C. Berckenkamp, Rijswijk, Zuid-Holland, Netherlands.

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Testimony of Healing

I am indeed grateful for Christian Science

March 21, 1936

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