Free as a bird

After my mother found Christian Science, we children were enrolled in the Christian Science Sunday school. We also sometimes attended Wednesday Testimony Meetings. I cannot recall a single testimony, but I do remember the spirit of joy present during those meetings. These days, testimonies are shared in person, in writing, and over zoom but the weekly testimony meetings continue to offer a deep sincerity, joy and gratitude. Many a tear and many a laugh have given deep meaning to the holy experience of testifying to the effect of the healing Christ, Truth in our midst. In the Church Manual (p. 47), it says: "Testimony in regard to the healing of the sick is highly important. More than a mere rehearsal of blessings, it scales the pinnacle of praise and illustrates the demonstration of Christ, 'who healeth all thy diseases' (Psalm 103:3). The Bible and the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, would be of no use unless we could put their truths into practice.

The eighty-three testimonies in the back of Mary Baker Eddy's book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (chapter title 'Fruitage') offer proof of its effectiveness as a practical guide to healing. They also offer a glimpse of how different people have approached the reading of this unique text.

One early student shared her experience like this: "I bought my first copy of Science and Health from [Mrs. Eddy]...In my search in reading the book to see how Jesus healed, I was perfectly healed of a complication of diseases." (Victoria H. Sargent, quoted in We Knew Mary Baker Eddy Vol II, expanded edition p 32.) (Emphasis added.)

Janette E. Weller remembered her initial reading like this: "In March 1884, I first heard of Christian Science and its healing work. I immediately purchased a copy of the seventh edition of Science and Health (SH), by Mary B. G. Eddy, and read it through carefully, giving most of my time for three weeks to its study. I had not heard that the reading of the book healed the sick, but before these three weeks had passed, I awoke to find that all the claims of disease and pain from which I had suffered for more than twenty years had vanished and that I was free as a bird" (ibid, p. 40).

Septimus Hanna and his wife had a slightly different experience. When Mrs. Hanna received a gifted copy of SH from her father, she felt she was too busy to read it and so recommended that her husband read it first. When he soon laid it aside as incomprehensible, she began its study. Hanna writes: "...as was her habit when she read books in which she became intensely interested, she read late into the night, or rather into the wee small hours. ...there was an almost instant change in her looks and manner...she was doing things that I knew she could not do before she began to read that book. ...Two or three months went by before I was interested enough to make another effort to read the book, but when I did so, I began to see in it [the] reasonable and logical presentation of God, man, and the universe for which I had hoped but had not before found. Yet I did not take up the serious study of the subject for about a year after this time" (ibid, p. 229-230).

In this month's edition of The Christian Science Journal, Thomas Mitchinson ("Read This Book" CSJ Sept 2020) reminds us that Mrs. Eddy "followed her own advice" i.e. "Read this book from beginning to end. Study it, ponder it" (SH p. 559). Eddy's student William R. Rathvon explains that she "was a close student of her own writings, the margin of her copy of Science and Health being sprinkled with pencilings, comments, cross-references, and correlative texts" (We Knew Mary Baker Eddy, Vol II, expanded edition, p. 555). 

A grateful reader from the US wrote: "My first reading of Science and Health was without understanding. I was full of darkness and gloom, and it was laid aside for a time. The good seed had been sown, however, and erelong the reading was resumed, and with such interest that my afflictions disappeared "like mist before the morning sun" (SH p. 622-623). 

And so we today can see for ourselves the effect of reading Science and Health as we "take the little book which is open in the hand of the angel" and "eat it up" (Rev. 10: 8, 9).  

Julie Swannell