Christian Science has been my way of life since I was a small child, and I am sincerely and deeply thankful for the good it has brought me. I was sent to a Christian Science Sunday School because my aunt had been healed through Science treatment of a very unsightly skin disease after all medical effort to cure her had failed. After this healing. I remember admiring her especially beautiful, clear complexion.

My subsequent Sunday School teaching eventually inspired me, when I was a high school student, and quite on my own, to begin the daily study of the Lesson-Sermon in the Christian Science Quarterly. This consistent study has enhanced my understanding of this wonderful truth. A statement made by Mary Baker Eddy in Miscellaneous Writings characterizes my experience as a student of this religion (p. 213): "Christian Science gives a fearless wing and firm foundation." A normal condition of good health has been natural to me as a result of adhering to the Science I have learned to understand and trust.

However, there have been times when I have been severly tested to "stick to the truth of being in contradistinction to the error that life, substance, or intelligence can be in matter" as Mrs. Eddy puts it in the textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (p. 418). A few years ago I was faced with a very serious stoppage of normal bodily functions, accompanied by almost constant pain. I turned to the two textbooks, the Bible and Science and Health, and to Mrs. Eddy's other writings for spiritual sustenance and the right ideas which would solve this problem. There was a struggle with fear and discouragement when I didn't get immediate relief or even some improvement, but I continued to study, work, and pray, and called upon a Christian Science practitioner for treatment.

One afternoon my husband and I decided we would study, with the Concordances, everything Mrs. Eddy had to say about nothing and nothingness, for I remembered that in Science and Health she writes (p. 480): "If sin, sickness, and death were understood as nothingness, they would disappear." Even while we were studying, I continued to suffer; but I became more calm, for I could see that what was arguing to me was, after all, nothing in the light of God's allness and the divine perfection which is present for me to reflect. This lessened the fear. Soon my bodily functions were restored to their normal activity.

There was a period of convalescence, and there were times when I was tempted to believe I wasn't completely well, but each time I prayed to reverse this suggestion and enlarge my sense of present good. After a few months the healing was complete, and I had a renewed sense of health and well-being. Again I was able to be active and enjoy sports such as tennis, skiing, and swimming and carry on the duties of homemaker, wife, and mother.

I am grateful for the faithful work of the practitioner and the staunch support of my husband and other members of the family. Our trust in God was greatly strengthened.

The steady flow of constructive, healing, right ideas into our home through the Christian Science periodicals, and as a result of class instruction, together with membership in The Mother Church and a branch church, has increased my understanding of this Science and helped me live it day by day. I am especially grateful of God for the Saviour, Christ Jesus, and for Mrs. Eddy for her inspired interpretation of the Bible and for giving us the Manual of The Mother Church.

(Mrs.) Mary Katherine Hensley
Chesterland, Ohio

I am glad to confirm my wife's testimony. As a lifelong Christian Scientist I have experienced and witnessed many healings resulting from radical reliance on the healing power of Truth, but none more convincing than the one she has related here.

Ben M. Hensley