For many years I was a sufferer from frequent attacks...

Rose O. Putnam

For many years I was a sufferer from frequent attacks of sick headache. One evening, when I had been in my room all day, too ill to dress, I went downstairs to say good night and tell the family I had decided to go to bed. My daughter, about fifteen years old, who attended the Christian Science Sunday School, said to me: "It's Wednesday, mother. Aren't you going to church?" When I replied that I was afraid to go, because of the nausea, she said, "Mother, you're not afraid. Wait a minute and I'll play your favorite hymn," and she went to the piano and played and sang hymn No. 325 in the Christian Science Hymnal:

Take up thy cross, the Saviour said,
If thou wouldst my disciple be;
Thyself deny, the world forsake,
And humbly follow after me.

Her beautiful childlike faith wakened me to the realization of the fact that I must deny a selfhood apart from God, and brought about an instantaneous healing. I dressed, went to church, and gave a testimony. Never since that time, more than sixteen years ago, have I had a sick headache.

Words cannot express my gratitude to God for our beloved Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, and for the "key" to the Scriptures, our textbook, Science and Health. When I first began to read the Bible, I thought the citation, "There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus," meant that since I had accepted Jesus as my Saviour, I was no longer condemned; but since learning something of the truth, through the study of Christian Science, I take its meaning to be that because I have accepted Christ Jesus as my Way-shower, I can no longer condemn anyone.

Not only in our textbook, but in all of our Leader's writings, do we find loving encouragement on every page. Beginning on page 116 of "Miscellaneous Writings" is an address to students entitled "Obedience," in which she tells us how to be obedient to Truth. In one sentence we read, "Never absent from your post, never off guard, never ill-humored, never unready to work for God,—is obedience; being 'faithful over a few things.' " To me, those words, "never unready to work for God," mean, Never unready to replace the wrong thought with the right thought. As we habitually persevere in replacing each wrong thought with a right thought, we are growing in grace or glorifying God. Then, as we progress, we can have not only joyous expectancy but gladsome assurance that, because divine intelligence is governing the universe and man, all is well now—and we know it.

(Mrs.) Rose O. Putnam, South Pasadena, California.

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