Through four successive years I healed,
preached, and taught in a general way, refusing to take any pay for my
services and living on a small annuity.
At one time I was called to speak
before the Lyceum Club, at Westerly, Rhode Island. On my arrival my
hostess told me that her next-door neighbor was dying. I asked permission to
see her. It was granted, and with my hostess I went to the invalid's
house.
The physicians had given up the case
and retired. I had stood by her side about fifteen minutes when the sick
woman rose from her bed, dressed herself, and was well. Afterwards they showed
me the clothes already prepared for her burial; and told me that her
physicians had said the diseased condition was caused by an injury received
from a surgical operation at the birth of her last babe, and that it was
impossible for her to be delivered of another child. It is sufficient to
add her babe was safely born, and weighed twelve pounds. The mother
afterwards wrote to me, "I never before suffered so little in
childbirth."
This scientific demonstration so
stirred the doctors and clergy that they had my notices for a second lecture
pulled down, and refused me a hearing in their halls and churches. This
circumstance is cited simply to show the opposition which Christian Science
encountered a quarter-century ago, as contrasted with its present welcome into
the sick-room.
Many were the desperate cases I
instantly healed, "without money and without price," and in most
instances without even an acknowledgment of the benefit.
Retrospection
and Introspection (1891) p. 40
After my
discovery of Christian Science, I healed consumption in its last stages, a
case which the M.D.'s, by verdict of the stethoscope and the schools, declared
incurable because
the lungs were mostly consumed. I healed malignant diphtheria and
carious bones that could be dented by the finger, saving the limbs when the
surgeon's instruments were lying on the table ready for their amputation.
I have healed at one visit a cancer that had eaten the flesh of the neck and
exposed the jugular vein so that it stood out like a cord. I have
physically restored sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, speech to the
dumb, and have made the lame walk.
About the
year 1869, I was wired to attend the patient of a distinguished M.D., the late
Dr. Davis of Manchester, N. H. The patient was pronounced dying of
pneumonia, and was breathing at intervals in agony. Her physician, who
stood by her bedside, declared that she could not live. On seeing her
immediately restored by me without material aid, he asked earnestly if I had a
work describing my system of healing. When answered in the negative, he
urged me immediately to write a book which should explain to the world my
curative system of metaphysics. In the ranks of the M.D.'s are noble men and
women, and I love them; but they must refrain from persecuting and
misrepresenting a system of medicine which from personal experience I have
proved to be more certain and
curative in functional and organic diseases than any material method. I
admonish Christian Scientists either to speak charitably of all mankind or to
keep silent, for love fulfils divine law and without this proof of love mental
practice were profitless.
The list of
cases healed by me could be made to include hopeless organic diseases of
almost every kind. I name those mentioned above simply to show the folly
of believing that the immutable laws of omnipotent Mind have not power over
and above matter in every mode and form, and the folly of the cognate
declaration that Christian Science is limited to imaginary diseases! On
the contrary, Christian Science has healed cases that I assert it would have
been impossible for the surgeon or materia medica to cure.
(Miscellany -
Ch. 1, To the Christian World, p.105)
