Chapter XVIII - Fruitage
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HEALTH AND UNDERSTANDING GAINED
HEALTH AND UNDERSTANDING GAINED
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Most of my boyhood days were spent in the hands
Most of my boyhood days were spent in the hands
of physicians. From birth I was considered a very
weakly child, but my mother was brave, and being
much devoted to me did everything within her knowl-
edge and power for my comfort. Sickness and medi-
cine were continually before me, and by the time I
reached my teens I thought I knew a material remedy
for every ill. I continued in my delusion, because I
was never told the real cause of my trouble. Besides
being under a leading specialist for two years, I was
also an outdoor patient at a noted hospital, but I was
not healed. It is wonderful how the "little ones" are
cared for in the face of all these seeming difficulties.
I always used the prayers that I had been taught, and
as I grew older I began to ask for wisdom. Little by
little I gained a desire for freedom, and my prayers
finally led me to the truth. The first week that I
heard of Christian Science, I visited the home of dear
Christian Science friends, and was at once refreshed
by their purity of thought and example. I bought
a copy of Science and Health, and, after studying it
a little while with the Bible, I saw that if the Bible
was true, Science and Health must also be true. I
began to demonstrate over my physical and mental
condition, and as soon as the fear and pain began
to leave me I felt encouraged to go on. I was healed,
and stopped complaining. I kept on studying our
textbook, and when I got an understanding in a
small degree of the Science of Mind, my first thought
was to help others. I was guided where I could pro-
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gress in Science, and was no longer "carried about with
gress in Science, and was no longer "carried about with
every wind of doctrine," but held to Principle as closely
as possible. From the time the healing came into my
consciousness, the desire for material remedies left me,
because Christian Science at once pointed out the way to
get at the cause of discord and disease. All that I had to
give up were the false beliefs of mortal mind. Christian
Science then taught me to love the church, and to appre-
ciate what it had already done for mankind. I often
thought of the old adage, "Charity begins at home,"
and after three years' preparation I felt able to take Chris-
tian Science to my home, where it found, in due time,
ready acceptance and willing disciples. This gave me
even greater joy than my own healing. The more good
I saw accomplished, the more love I had for the truth.
Christian Science changed my course from the first, and
gave me a nobler aim and purpose in life. I was not
so easily influenced by other people's shortcomings,
when I learned that evil has neither personality nor place.
I was not so ready to take offence, when I found out the
way to work unselfishly for the upbuilding of the Cause.
– A. E. J., Toledo, Ohio.
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AN EVER-PRESENT HELP FOUND
AN EVER-PRESENT HELP FOUND
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On the 23rd of March, 1900, I received from one of my
On the 23rd of March, 1900, I received from one of my
daughters a copy of Science and Health on my seventy-first
birthday. Although a constant reader of all kinds of papers
and books, I had never heard anything of Christian Sci-
ence, except a short notice that spring in a San Francisco
newspaper, from an orthodox clergyman, referring to the
Christian Science people in not very complimentary style.