The assignment this year is to find and read again a book that was put out some decades ago by The Christian Science Publishing Society – A Century of Christian Science Healing. It was published in both paperback and hardback. On the paperback cover, there was this straightforward sentence, “This book is not a study in medicine or in church history but in human lives healed and regenerated by the Christ.”

It won’t be a “spoiler” to mention just one example, out of so very many, of those “human lives healed” recounted in the book. You’ll find these accounts have a timelessness and seem to be bursting with new meaning for us right now.

Here’s what the book tells us about one of the testifiers:

“Suffering from an internal growth, totally blind, almost completely paralyzed, and finally in a semi-conscious state, she heard her husband say, to the practitioner who had been called in, ‘If Christian Science heals my wife, I’ll be the best Christian Scientist you have in your organization.’ The practitioner answered, ‘Don’t say that. If Christian Science is not the truth, you do not want it, even if it heals her. If it is truth, you want it, even if she is not healed.’ Suddenly, as the woman later explained, ‘the fear of dying left me in my realization that what I really wanted was to know God better – to know Him as he actually is – to know the truth.’ The same night she was instantaneously healed.”

Your assignment is to answer the following questions after reading the Century book all the way through (256 pp.). Incidentally, each section of testimonies (organized generally by the year of publication) is preceded by a commentary regarding that period and a helpful explanation of aspects of Christian Science healing.

1. Did the book make changes in your view of Christian Science healing? How would you sum up these changes of view or attitude?

2. Choose from the book two of your favorite accounts of healing and explain why they are especially meaningful to you.

3. Jot down one of yours, or one of your friends’, or one of your family’s healings, that you hadn’t thought much about or hadn’t even remembered. Begin keeping a list of your healings, as Mrs. Eddy recommended.

4. In brief, what are you going to do to be more active in healing yourself and others through prayer and treatment as understood in Christian Science, now that you’ve read this book?