In the year 1911 I became interested...

Alice A. Church

In the year 1911 I became interested in Christian Science. We had moved from a small town in Vermont to a city where we met some neighbors who were Christian Scientists and who asked us to go to church with them. I agreed to go because I had a longing to know more about God. I left the church feeling I had spent that hour in the presence of the God I had always searched for. So we started to study the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy.

One morning, after reading the Lesson Sermon. I got up to walk, and a pain caught me in my side, something I had experienced off and on for years. My first thought was that I should be incapacitated for some weeks. Then I thought, If Christian Science is good for anything, it can heal me. The first verse of the twenty third Psalm came to me and I repeated it: "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want." I asked myself what it was that I should not want, and realized that it was healing—I did not need to want to be healed, for man includes perfection. The pain left me and has never returned.

At one time my eyes were in such a condition I could read for only a few minutes at a time. In our textbook (p. 586) I found the following statement: "Eyes. Spiritual discernment,—not material but mental." Soon I was able to read all I wanted to, for I found out that sight is spiritual and does not depend on material eyes. I have enjoyed good sight ever since.

Another time I became so deaf that I could hardly hear the organ, much less any of the service. My duties in the church made it necessary for me to sit in the very rear of the church. I earnestly studied the definition of "ears" on page 585 of our textbook, where Mrs. Eddy defines them as "not organs of the so called corporeal senses, but spiritual understanding." When I realized that hearing was not in my ears, but is spiritual understanding, I manifested normal hearing. This truth became so clear to me that suddenly during a Wednesday evening service I heard the Reader announce the hymn. I found my own place and from a heart full of gratitude I sang as I had never sung before. This was many years ago, and I have never since been in bondage to that difficulty.

I shall always be grateful for sixteen years' service in the Christian Science Sunday School. Mrs. Eddy says (ibid., p. 3): "Gratitude is much more than a verbal expression of thanks. Action expresses more gratitude than speech." This is my desire, to express gratitude to God in active service.

When my husband passed on some years later all sense of loss or separation was met in about two weeks. I was greatly helped by Mrs. Eddy's words on page 584 of our textbook, where she says death is "an illusion, the lie of life in matter; the unreal and untrue; the opposite of Life."

I was left with a home to look after, and in two years I decided I should sell it. I worked all summer, but did not feel happy about it, so I put the house in shape for the winter. One day I decided to put a price on the house, knowing that if it sold at that price it would be God's working, and if not, that Love would work out something so that I should be happy to stay there. As I pondered it a price came to me that was more than I had hoped to get. Nevertheless, in four days the house was sold without an accent or even the need of putting out a sign.

It was at a time when the housing problem was acute, but I knew I was in God's care. I took the verse in Exodus (23:20), "Behold, I send an Angel before thee, to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared," and as I worked to understand the meaning of this statement I found a place which met my needs completely.

I am very grateful that when I put self out of the way and listen for God's guidance and act accordingly, He never fails me. There are no words to tell how much I owe our revered Leader for Christian Science, which teaches us how to love and know God, who bestows all good on His children.—(Mrs.) Alice A. Church, Detroit, Michigan.

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Testimony of Healing

From the moment I first learned...

March 3, 1945

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