MY TESTIMONY
By Dr. Leslie R. Stone
This testimony is the outgrowth of the many queries that have resulted from the publication of volumes I and II of the Messages from Jesus and Celestials, which I first printed in 1940, and which have thereafter gone through three editions. On the publication of this fourth edition of volume I, I am integrating all those questions from interested readers into a new testimony, which will show how it was that Mr. Padgett was able to perform the work of receiving these remarkable messages. It tells how I met Mr. Padgett and my reasons for believing that he was actually able to receive messages, not merely from the spirit world, but from the greatest spirits of the Celestial Heavens, whose Master is Jesus of Nazareth.
I was born on November 10, 1876 at Aldershot, Hampshire, England, the tenth of thirteen children. I attended the public school there and later completed courses at the Grammar School of Farnham, Surrey, founded by King Edward VIth. Thereafter I worked in the saddlery shop of my father, William Stone, at Aldershot, and later at London. When business slackened, I emigrated to Toronto, Canada, in 1903. On that occasion, my mother, who was a great believer in prayer, asked the Heavenly Father to let her know what His will was; His answer was that I should go.
In Toronto one day I was attracted to a notice of a spiritualist meeting. Never having attended one before, I was curious and went. The medium, who was giving messages from the platform, pointed to me and said: "Your father, who says he is William Stone, is here, and is glad that he is able to greet you." The medium then described my father, such as I had known him. He had never been to the New World and had died when I was seven years of age. Under the circumstances, this woman could hardly have been asked to give this information without direct contact with the spirit of my father.
After this experience, I began to read many books on spiritualism, such as the "Nature's Divine Revelation," by Andrew Jackson Davis, also "The Great Harmonia" by the same author. These books had a profound effect upon me, for the faith in the religious doctrines which my mother, a strong Baptist, had taught me, could no longer interest me as the repositories of the truths. I believed in the existence of a great spirit world and in the communication of mortals and spirits. At the same time, however, Spiritualism as it was being taught did not, I confess, completely satisfy my soul longings. Not until I met Mr. James E. Padgett and read the messages which, I am thoroughly convinced, came from Jesus and the Celestial Spirits, was I satisfied that at last I had really come to know the great religious truths and that I knew the way to the Father and at-onement with Him.
It took me eleven years after coming to the New World before I met Mr. Padgett. Spirit guides advised my going to Detroit. Here the production of automobiles was such that it was impossible to maintain myself in saddlery work, and again on spiritual advice, I moved to Buffalo. Here I worked and studied in a hospital for seven years and finally became a graduate nurse. This period of my life was, I feel, an important one, in that it gave me that interest in healing which later induced me to study chiropratic.
Continue to Page 2