It gives me joy to acknowledge...

Harriet H. Williams

It gives me joy to acknowledge the truth of Christian Science, which has brought much real happiness to me.

It was the criticism of a kind doctor which turned me to Christian Science twenty years ago. He was very discouraging over the condition of my younger son, who had been in poor health the greater part of his nine years of life. After treating him for chronic colds, puncturing his eardrums, and predicting possible deafness or a mastoid operation, he advised me to remove him from school; then he added that he thought it was a case of "overdoctoring" or too much care. I had thought myself a perfect mother. This child had been constantly under a doctor's supervision from birth, and yet had never been well and strong. This set me thinking, and I went straight from that doctor's office to the home of a Christian Science practitioner.

I knew nothing whatever of Christian Science, and told the practitioner I did not even believe in God. Though reared in a religious home, I had turned bitterly against God when a dearly loved sister had passed on five years before. The practitioner listened lovingly, and then convinced me that God did not send sickness or death. For some time she talked to me about God—His infinite goodness and loving care. With this new concept of God—a God of love, ever present and all-knowing—the faith of my childhood, uplifted in this new understanding, completely overcame all bitterness. Though I have had many healings through the years, I count this first healing—of atheism—as my most precious blessing.

The next day I bought the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, and a Bible, and began to study. Gradually, with the practitioner's help, I was enabled to loose the boy, "and let him go" (John 11:44). And as my own fears lessened, he improved and was soon quite well, later on developing into an unusually strong boy, playing football in his college days. I was so steeped in medical theories that it was hard to learn to trust him and another son to God. Fear, anxiety, and human mother love made my problems seem difficult. A sense of false responsibility was overcome when I was able to see these children as in reality the ideas of God, always under His law of good, and know them encircled with divine Mind's guidance and protection.

I am grateful for a healing which occurred some years ago after an automobile accident. I was carried, semiconscious, from the wreck to the home of a near-by doctor. I had been so dependent upon practitioners I often wondered what I should do if I had to depend on my own understanding. It seemed necessary for the doctor to take a number of stitches immediately in my face. I turned completely to God. The doctor took the stitches without using even a local anesthetic and I felt no pain. Though I was without the sense of smell for almost a year, with the help of practitioners this was fully restored. Also the scars have almost disappeared and were never very noticeable.

Christian Science is certainly a preventive as well as a curative, for before beginning this study I was accustomed to suffer often from severe colds and headaches, and I can truly say I have not had one for years. I have also been healed of chronic indigestion, acute stomach trouble, and stomach ulcers. I have had countless other healings, some quick and some quite slow. I am grateful for all of them, for from each wilderness experience there has come a blessing through the lessons I have been forced to learn.

I am humbly grateful for all the physical healings, but even more grateful for the change Christian Science has brought in my own thinking. I have been healed to a great extent of an unhappy disposition, worry, criticism, selfishness, discouragement. When the healings have been slow, I have found sometimes that when I could just stop outlining—stop telling God how and when and where things had to be done—and let Him take charge, the problem was solved. As a practitioner once told me, "Don't do so much, just be." It has not been in strenuous struggling but in quiet, prayerful listening that I have heard the "still small voice."

I have seen a member of my own family turn to Christian Science after a serious illness. I have seen medical laws one by one reversed, and this loved one restored and regenerated.

I am grateful for class instruction and for the association meetings, which are always a radiant renewal of the mountaintop experience.

Words cannot express the profound gratitude and reverent love I feel for Mrs. Eddy, who through her clear, consecrated understanding was enabled to reveal Truth to us.—(Mrs.) Harriet H. Williams, Atlanta, Georgia.

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