I am very grateful for Christian Science. After we moved to another home and area, I began to have school problems last year, in the seventh grade; and also I was shy. I didn't have any friends, and at my school they didn't seem to like you if you wouldn't smoke. I made a friend later, but she moved. She and I both knew a girl we were friendly with; however, I didn't care too much for her.

There was one girl who was in a lot of my classes who pestered me. She would steal things or grab them and not return them. So, I began to know the truth, that is, to pray. I knew that God is good and He is All. We who are His children reflect that good and can only be good. I realized I had to see everyone as God's child, and to understand they were good and that was all they could be. Also, I kept holding to the thought from Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy (p. 420), "Truth not error, Love not hate, Spirit not matter, governs man." Then the girl who had been taking things returned them and hasn't pestered me since.

Now I have a nice friend who doesn't smoke. I am not shy anymore and am more my true self. Also the people around me are nicer.

I am enjoying the Christian Science Sunday School in our branch church, where I have been a pupil more than eleven years, ever since I was two years old.

(Miss) Sharon Ruth White
San Jose, California

For almost ten years, I had a continual infection in my ears. Although I was a Christian Scientist during these years, I had somewhat accepted this ear problem and just endured it. Last summer the problem became quite acute; it distracted me in whatever I was doing. With the loving encouragement of a friend, I contacted a Christian Science practitioner. This was the first step in my healing. I had finally decided to come to grips with error, to tolerate it no longer, and to prove its nothingness. The time had come to glorify God and His perfection.

The practitioner set me on the right track immediately by telling me it was a sin to tolerate error, including the error of belief in sickness. The words were strong and loving, as is the law of God, divine Love. She also assured me that only good could pass from God to man. I was soon free of the physical disorder and able to resume my activities. At this time I also began to study Christian Science more diligently than ever before. It was becoming clearer to me how man reflects God's being. And that man can express only qualities that are like his Maker. Man possesses only the good that identifies him with his divine source.

About a month after the ear infection had left, it returned more severely than ever before. My study had taught me that this was simply mortal mind claiming that it could reverse the law of God. As my ears distracted me, I would promptly ask myself, "Who says so?" I knew that "matter neither sees, hears, nor feels" (Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy, p. 467). I had to remind myself constantly that man's nature derives from God and is spiritual, and that my inseparable relationship with God included only good. God, Mind, could not know a material organ called an ear.

In Science and Health Mrs. Eddy states (p. 269), "Metaphysics resolves things into thoughts, and exchanges the objects of sense for the ideas of Soul." And part of the definition of "ears" in the Glossary of Science and Health is (p. 585), "Not organs of the so-called corporeal senses, but spiritual understanding." My clearer understanding of the senses of Soul, God, and of what man is, freed me from any further discomfort or physical effects. Prayer had removed the mist and showed me more about the real man.

Glenn C. Johnson
Portsmouth, New Hampshire