"Yes, ma’am, I know it is the glorious Truth which has loosed my
rheumatiz, and made me free, and I am just ashamed to confess to you and
Master Carol that just lately thoughts I can’t get rid of come
tormenting me. In this way: I go sometimes to church, but I feel no
pleasure in the service. It has lost its hold o’ me. Then I think o’
Father and Mother, o’ blessed memory. They lived and died with no
thought o’ beyond what the Rector could give them. It sort o’ troubles
me to think I am going away from what they trusted to. The Rector then
was an old man. Why, ma’am, if ever a saint o’ God walked this earth,
he was one. If he passed down the village street, you’d see all the
children run to him, clustering round him. When he looked at you, it
didn’t seem to need any words: it was just as if he said, ’God bless
you.’ His smile was a blessing. So I just ask myself, Why wasn’t the
sick healed when he prayed for them, if it was right and God’s will for
them to be healed? Surely, he was a servant of God."
"I propounded a similar question, Mr. Higgs, to the lady I have been
staying with in Devonshire, Carol’s cousin, Miss Desmond. It has been my
great privilege to know many saintly characters, whose lives testified
to their faith. My own mother was such a one. Yet, for many years, she
was a great sufferer. I asked Miss Desmond why such loving faith in God
and Jesus the Christ, had not always brought physical healing. What we
call the orthodox church, also Non-conformity, has nurtured souls for
heaven. We cannot, therefore, condemn its teaching. Miss Desmond said it
is not for us to judge or to criticise either individuals or other
churches. We all, individually and collectively, can only grasp the
truth as far as we apprehend it, and we must not harbor a troubled
thought that in becoming Christian Scientists we are leaving any church
to which we once belonged. We are simply moving forward--stepping
upward to a higher platform. It is the law of progression. A child at
school does not regret being moved to a higher class. Neither have we
anything to regret, even if we entirely sever our connection with the
church of our childhood. Even now, for the most advanced Christian
Scientists there is yet a higher platform to be reached, since Mrs. Eddy
says, in _Science and Health_, ’All of Truth is not understood.’ All we
have to do at the present is to live up to--to demonstrate, the highest
that we know. You in your walk of life, I in mine; and these dear
children, who, spiritually, have touched the hem of Christ’s garment and
have been healed, in theirs."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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