To express my profound gratitude for healing received, and in the hope that my words may bring relief to others who are suffering, this testimonial is given. With joy and humility I desire to make my first public words on this subject the acknowledgment of my error and injustice expressed in days past by thought and word against Christian Science and its Discoverer and Founder. Without any acquaintance with Mrs. Eddy or understanding of her teaching, I repeatedly in public, as well as in private, assailed both. Now, knowing more of that Mind which was in Christ Jesus, I am writing with ardent desire that perhaps some one who without knowledge harshly judges Christian Science, may be guided into the way of that charity which "thinketh no evil." In respect to religious affiliation I have not been an ecclesiastical wanderer. Forty years have been passed in one orthodox Christian body, thirty-four of those years being spent in its ministry. I loved my church and served it with a zeal born of conscientious conviction, for through God this church was to me a restraining and sustaining power, and meant
The world's great altar-stairs,
Which led through darkness up to God.
Looking back over that period, I now understand that, although I was conscious of the divine presence and help, I yet saw God as "through a glass, darkly," for by my training and vows I was compelled to acknowledge Him as the author of evil, — of sin, sickness, and death, — and the creator of a competitor to His throne, — an evil intelligence called the devil. Having accepted and taught these declarations as true, I now know that they obscured my concept of God so that I could not "see him as he is;" and that their pall lay heavy on my heart in spite of the solace and strength which came to me day by day.
During my ministry I was blessed with loving and loyal parishioners; and up to the time of which I speak not a semblance of a dream of ever separating from my church had touched me. The barest outline of the causes leading to that change and the circumstances attending it may be given. Early in 1906 I found myself unable adequately to perform the duties of the large church of which I was pastor. Extreme nervousness, irritability, fear, sleeplessness, stomach and bowel trouble, with pain in the head and spine, made life seem almost unbearable. Problems of work once undertaken with courage now frightened me beyond description. By the goodness and generosity of my parish I was granted leave of absence for fourteen months. With my wife I went abroad, so far as I was concerned without courage and without purpose. Improvement came with rest, and at the end of a year I returned and resumed my duties, only to find that even slight exertions brought back all the old symptoms. For two years longer I struggled on with my work, while medical friends rendered all the help which their sympathy and earnest efforts could bestow. Late in the autumn of 1910 I resigned my pastorate, such resignation to take effect a year later, having determined to seek rest for five years in some secular employment and then return to the work of the ministry.
Though far from being well, the summer of 1911 found me in Europe with a small party of friends. While in Switzerland I met with an accident which, causing almost constant pain, was an additional weight to the burden I already bore. During August my wife and I remained quietly in Oxford, England, where we were absolute strangers. Up to the morning of Aug. 14, 1911, I had never entertained a thought of seeking or resorting to Christian Science; had never been recommended so to do; nor had I read a line of the textbook or other Christian Science literature. Up to that day I had been a prejudiced but conscientious and consistent enemy of it, and yet on that morning, in the town of Oxford, as I dragged myself along the street called Corn Market, wretched in body and distressed in mind, my attention was attracted to the sign at the entrance of a Christian Science reading-room; and then and there, although the clear consciousness of it did not appear until two days later, I was changed from a scoffer to a loving follower.
I tarried at the door of that reading-room, desiring and yet resisting entrance. Angry and ashamed, I reasoned with myself, calling to memory the positions of responsibility and honor I had held for many years in my church and the multitude of friends who had trusted me, thus endeavoring to prevail against the growing desire to enter. There on the stone pavement I wrestled with error until the angel of Truth brought deliverance and with it the breaking of a new day. Thrice I climbed the stairs to the reading-room, remaining each time for a few minutes and then retreating, ashamed of and humiliated by my actions. On entering the room the fourth time, with increased pain of body, distress of mind, and anguish at what seemed to me downright treason against my church and friends, I made known to the attendant something of my suffering condition, and she directed me to a practitioner, with whom I soon made arrangements for treatment. The next morning she came to our lodgings, and having given me a treatment departed, leaving a copy of the Christian Science text-book, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mrs. Eddy. Two hours later I took up this book, and opening it at the chapter on Prayer began reading its wonderful spiritual message. Before completing the first page I realized that a remarkable change, involving physical, mental, moral, and spiritual conditions, was taking place in my consciousness. I read almost continuously for four hours. I experienced no excitement, but was possessed with a spirit of calmness and peace. I ate a hearty dinner, slept through the night, — the first perfect sleep for months, — and awoke in the morning to find all sense of physical discomfort and mental distress vanished, and instead thereof a joy of life and a consciousness of God which had swept away discord of mind and body as effectually as light drives out darkness. Seven months have passed, and the knowledge and blessing are deepening with time.
Physical healing alone could not have caused me to sever my longstanding ecclesiastical ties and, unashamed and unafraid, enter a religious body which I had insistently treated with intolerant abuse. I may truly say that the first healing I was conscious of was not physical but theological. My concept of God and the universe, including man, seemed to have changed almost in a moment. God appeared to me as perfect Love, no longer the creator of an evil intelligence named the devil; nor was He the author of sin, sickness, disease, and death; and in that moment the unsubstantiality of the material creation appeared and I began to understand that God as Spirit could not create anything unlike Himself. All that was purely spiritual in my religious experience remained, but my hold upon materialism and forms and ceremonies to which I had been wedded for more than a third of a century seemed to loosen and vanish in a moment, and I knew I could never again worship God as I was wont to do. I became aware that some measure of understanding had taken the place of belief; universal salvation had become to me an inevitable tenet; the miracles of Jesus stood out simply as those "signs following" which every man who saw the perfect God and His perfect spiritual creation might do; and more profoundly than ever before Jesus Christ became to me the only way and Truth and Life.
As one "born out of due time," I have been kindly and divinely led into the borderland of a fuller sense of Life, Truth, and Love. To me Mrs. Eddy's message is the renaissance of Christianity, a return to the simplicity of Jesus' teaching and work, and through this rebirth I have gained an understanding of God which has illumined the teaching of Scripture and interpreted the vital truth of primitive Christianity. This blessing could not have come to me had not Mrs. Eddy, through years of travail and mortal opposition, struggled on until she saw God as He is, and so was enabled to translate afresh into spiritual language the metaphysical terms by which we might overcome the illusions of discord, sin, sickness, and death, and rise to the knowledge of an ever-present, omnipotent God, who alone forgiveth our sins and healeth our infirmities. — Andrew J. Graham, Boston, Mass.
[Lead testimony in The Christian
Science Journal, August, 1912.]