My introduction to Christian Science...

Alfred Bole

My introduction to Christian Science was at a Wednesday evening testimony meeting. I had been brought home from France after World War I as a stretcher case, suffering from what the doctors called trench nephritis, from which I was told I would never be entirely free. I did not know when I went to a service in a Church of Christ, Scientist, a few years later that Christian Science had anything to do with healing disease. I attended because I had been investigating various denominations with a desire to find a concept of God I could accept. My experiences in the trenches during the war had shattered much of my faith in a divine power.

What I heard read from the desk during the service that evening met my need, for the reading revealed a God who does not send suffering of any kind to His creation. After the service I bought a copy of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, and took it with me to the hotel where I was staying.

On retiring, I read the first chapter of Genesis in the Bible and the chapter entitled "Prayer" in Science and Health. I lost all sense of time as I pondered the passages I was reading from the two books, and I caught a glimpse of the scientific fact that the disease from which I was suffering was not real, because, as we read in the first chapter of Genesis (verse 31), "God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good."

The following morning I went down to breakfast and ate the kind of food which I had not been able to eat since my discharge from hospital three years previously. I also discarded a body belt I was wearing and threw away a special medicine I was taking at that time. This healing took place over thirty-seven years ago and has been permanent. It was not until some months after the healing of the trench disease that I realized that I had also been healed of constipation, from which I had suffered from boyhood.

Mrs. Eddy states in Science and Health (p. 1), "Desire is prayer; and no loss can occur from trusting God with our desires, that they may be moulded and exalted before they take form in words and in deeds." Certainly my prayer was answered when I was led to attend that Wednesday evening testimony meeting. Since that time I have relied entirely on Christian Science to solve problems that have arisen, and they have always been met when I have obeyed the First Commandment (Ex. 20:3), "Thou shalt have no other gods before me."

I am grateful to our dear Master, Christ Jesus, and to our beloved Leader, Mrs. Eddy, whose unselfed life has given to this age the final revelation of Truth. I am happy to be a member of The Mother Church and of a branch church.— Alfred Bole, Wallasey, Cheshire, England.

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