Former Well-Known Hotel Man Relates his Experience with Christian Science.

Rollin K. Sherman

Daily Telegraph, September 28, 1899

To the Editor of The Nashua Telegraph, Sir:— I greatly appreciate your kindness in allowing me space in the columns of the Telegraph to give the public the benefit of my marvelous healing of late, together with some general remarks on Christian Science.

My only motive in giving an account of my healing through Christian Science is this: I desire to show the suffering multitudes that the power of God through the understanding of Truth is demonstrated in our day as it was in the day of Jesus and his disciples, over sin, sickness, death, and every other trouble, and I would herald these glad tidings of great joy to the ends of the earth, that I may "comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God;" and who does not need comforting in the midst of these terrible ordeals of mortal life?

I propose at this point to give an unvarnished statement of my healing, which will corroborate the statements I have already made concerning Christian Science and other statements that I may make at the close of this article.

The people of Nashua know full well that I had been hobbling through its streets much of the time for two and a half years, a decrepit, old, physical wreck of mortal manhood, having been given up to die by my physician and my family, and the people were thinking and saying, "That man is not long for this world." Grip, followed by acute bronchitis and terminating in nervous prostration lasting for over two years, were the claims upon me.

My physician, a kind-hearted gentleman, in his desire to alleviate my sufferings, prescribed a mild opiate (papine) when I was first taken sick, and this drug was administered to me from two to four times a day, nearly every day for the entire period of my sickness. The thoughts of the possibility of acquiring the opium habit were an unbearable torture at times that threw me into despair, and I cried to God in my agony to save me from such an awful doom and to heal my sickness; for I believed that the prayer of faith would save the sick; but for the want of the understanding of Christ, Truth, I could not touch the hem of his garment myself, nor could the ministers or others, who prayed with me so kindly, so tenderly, and so fervently. We all lacked the understanding of Truth to overcome sickness, and hence the "signs" which Jesus declared should follow them that believe—healing the sick, etc.—did not, could not, follow our belief; for it was belief without understanding, and the Bible says, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." Our failure was simply in not knowing or understanding Truth.

***

In February, 1899, my wife and I went to Brockton, Mass., to stay a while with my daughter. While there my hopes were intermittent with no perceptible improvement in my condition, although I tried hard to exercise a cheerful, hopeful faith that I was gaining. I said to my wife the first day of last April (1899), "I feel that I am a physical wreck without one particle of soundness from the crown of my head to the sole of my feet." My lungs seemed to be nearly gone, my stomach was in an awful condition as I thought, and I was mincing over a scanty diet, almost afraid to eat anything, and, indeed, many things seemed to throw me into diarrhea and distress me much. I was also suffering with a burning fever in my very bones from which I had suffered much of the time from my first attack of grip in 1896, and the fear of the morphine habit was also staring me full in the face.

At this juncture, when it seemed to me that I could not stand the strain any longer, when I was prepared to take Truth at any cost, God came to my rescue and offered me relief through Christian Science.

Three months earlier I would have died rather than enter into this "devilish delusion," as I heard Christian Science called from a Christian pulpit by an evangelist two weeks before the time I refer to. But what was I to do? What could I do? I had been fighting death all alone—looking right into the grave almost, until the very tortures of hell seemed to be consuming my flesh. I was perfectly helpless myself; doctors had failed me; ministers could not help me; the church had no healing balm to offer me, and my wife and my daughter had lost faith, as they told me themselves. Thus I was standing all alone upon the very brink of the grave, "having no hope, and without God in the world." Notwithstanding my mortal wretchedness, the third day of April I advised my granddaughter, who had been invited to attend a Christian Science meeting, to keep away from these deluded people, affirming that "Christian Science is the most gigantic error of the age," and yet I could not have stated one principle of Christian Science; for I had no more understanding of it than all others who as unwittingly antagonize it to-day, as I had done.

***

The Christian Science Journal and the Sentinel fell into my hands the same day, and I began to read them, and continued reading them through the week, and hope sprang up as I read the wonderful cures of every conceivable type of disease all over the world, and as I caught the spirit of the various articles, brimful of faith in God, faith in Jesus Christ, faith in the Scriptures, all of which breathe the very atmosphere of purity, love, and heaven in every line. On Sunday morning, April 9, I began reading the Christian Science text-book, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," by Mary Baker G. Eddy. The very first sentence in the preface settled my mind as to the truth of that wonderful, God-inspired book. Hope and gladness came into all our hearts as we read and talked nothing else but Christian Science. I went to a Christian Science healer April 13 for treatment. She told me that it would be necessary to lay aside all the materia medica, including opiates, which I was ready to do; as I had not taken medicine for a long time.

At my first visit she told me to read the ninety-first Psalm. After four treatments, two present and two absent, she discharged me with the remark that I needed no treatment, as I was getting the needed help in reading Science and Health, and that if I continued reading that book with understanding as I had done, I would be healed. She further remarked that she never saw or heard of one who took Christian Science so rapidly and so understandingly as I was doing. Ah, yes; I was a dying man fleeing from death and the grave crying, "Life, life, eternal life."

I continued reading Science and Health, and I finished reading it for the first time Sunday, April 30, in just three weeks. As I closed the book and laid it down, my thoughts, which had been almost wholly absorbed in Christian Science for four weeks, naturally turned back to my body again, and to my utter astonishment I found myself feeling perfectly well, and in my joy I exclaimed, "Why, I am perfectly healed!" The fever and pain had entirely disappeared, and I exclaimed again with increased astonishment, "I have scarcely thought of my stomach or any other physical organ, for four weeks, and I have been eating everything set before me, taking no thought for my life, what I should eat, without the least bad effect therefrom!"

Every organ in my body seemed perfectly sound, and, indeed, had I never studied physiology, I should not have believed that I had any physical organs, as I had no mortal sense of them whatever. I had a little struggle for two or three days after I left off taking papine; but on my awakening to the consciousness of health I found it had utterly disappeared, together with the whole brood of devils (evils) which had held high carnival over my poor, mortal mind and body for over two years, and none of these imps of hell have ever returned to torment me to this day (September 15). This wonderful result was effected by simply reading Science and Health after I had received the four treatments mentioned. In my haste for deliverance, I went through the book with a rush; but I caught a glimpse of the truth that God is the only Life, Substance, and Mind.

Two or three days later my daughter said to me, as I was frisking about like a young man, "Father, I never saw such a wonderful change in a person in my life as has taken place in you in so short a time. You are no more the man you were a month ago than darkness is like light!"

Tell me, do you, oh mortal man, that "This is the work of the devil (evil) ?" That this is "Satan himself transformed into an angel of light?" the "profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so-called" ? Where, then, shall we look for the work of God? Christian Science is bringing mortals out of darkness into spiritual light, love, health, and happiness, all over the earth to-day, far beyond any other agency known. Then is not this cry against Christian Science, the pharisaical spirit of the first century re-echoed in this nineteenth century which would "crucify . . . the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame"? It sounds so much like the voice coming up from the pit as in the days of the incarnation of the Son of God in the flesh, crying, "Crucify him ! crucify him!"

My brethren, would it not be well for us to understand Christian Science better before we write, preach, and talk against it? Would it not be wise in us to heed Dr. Gamaliel's advice to his brethren, to "refrain from these men; let them alone: . . . lest haply ye [too] be found even to fight against God?"

I wish to state in this connection, parenthetically, that I have read all of Mrs. Eddy's works, eleven books and booklets all told, I think, and I have read Science and Health three times by course, and some parts of it several times, making a close study of it from April 9 to the present time, and I have not read a sentence in any of these works that has raised a doubt in my mind that it was Scriptural and absolutely true.

I will add, as I draw this article to a close, that if further evidence is called for to establish my statement, which seems almost incredible to some, my wife and others will corroborate every word I have written concerning my healing, and they will add that I have not overdrawn the facts in my statements, in the least. Finally, if my statements are true, if this marvelous healing, and this wonderful spiritual uplift were caused by Christian Science, then this fact demonstrates the truth that the Christianity of Jesus and Christian Science are one, for they are based upon the same Principle, and they are demonstrated by the same rule, the rule of ever-present, omnipotent Love.

Rollin K. Sherman.
Daily Telegraph, Nashua, N. H.