My first demonstration in Christian Science was with...

Anna Preston

My first demonstration in Christian Science was with a plant, cherished for years, that had dwindled away to a single weak shoot. When this was taken out of the pot in the spring, the root was found to have completely disappeared. The shoot was put in the ground, nevertheless, but was completely shriveled up the same day by a violent windstorm. That year I was reading Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy for the first time—very slowly—and had reached the point in the chapter entitled "Genesis," at which consideration is given to the statement (p. 520) that "the Lord God [Jehovah] made ... every plant of the field before it was in the earth." This fact came home to me so vividly that the plant was literally restored from nothing.

An attack of inflammation in the legs was healed when, one wet morning, seeing some showy field flowers in the midst of a patch of tall weeds, I plunged into the drenched tangle up to the waist to gather the flowers to decorate the table for guests, recalling Mrs. Eddy's statement (ibid., p. 257) that "divine Love,—is the father of the rain, 'who hath begotten the drops of dew.' "

A tendency to severe bronchial colds took several years to overcome, but finally the healing come with the realization that Jesus "suffered not the devils to speak," and the difficulty has never returned.

I have much cause to be grateful for protection experienced through the loving work of a practitioner and the unselfish and steafast assistance of friends, during a most harassing and protracted legal entanglement.

Space would fail for the mention of every cause for gratitude, but I especially wish to speak of the privilege of having been in Boston to go to The Mother Church for the first Christian Science service I ever attended. I had seldom entered a church of any sort previously, but in The Mother Church that first time there was such a home sense, it seemed as if I had always attended. Nothing seemed strange, but just lovely and natural. This testimony cannot be closed without reference to the richness and beauty of our wonderful new Hymnal, and the sense it gives to the brotherhood of man. One realizes in singing these lovely hymns from all lands that indeed "there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free."

(Miss) Anna Preston, Clarkson, Ontario, Canada.

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