Mr. Editor:—In response to your request to give my experience to the readers of the Journal as given to the recent class, I make known the following facts :— Six years ago I went for healing to one I have since learned was a mind-curist, but who then claimed to heal by Christian Science. After receiving relief, and as I then believed healing, I sought to know the process by which she was enabled to do this work. I was told by her that a class would be formed in due time and I could then gain the light I sought for.
I became impatient at the waiting and thought I would seek instruction from some publication. The search led me to "Science And Health" and then to its author, who very kindly gave me nearly an entire evening, during which I related to her my experience. She spoke no word denouncing Mrs. S—, but did call to my attention the false and the true teaching, and said to me, "I hope, Mr. H., that when you study, you will get the Truth." I returned to Mrs. S —, joyful in the thought that I had met the author of the above named book; but imagine the confusion of mind when I was met by the one whom I then believed to have healed me, with the declaration that the author of such ethics, the anathematizer of animal magnetism, and the discoverer of Christian Science "had departed from the path of Science, into selfishness, mesmerism," &c., and assured me that she had used this power on the very night of my call to make her sick; that she never was so sick in her life as at the very time I was in conversation with this lady.
I naturally believed one whom I conceived had healed me; and it was thus that my thought became turned to seek Truth in error. I mean just this—to seek in the highest manifestations of so-called mortal mind, the evidence of the Substance of Truth. I began with mistaking belief, will-power, or blind faith in the transference of thought force, for what Mrs. Eddy understands to be Divine Mind: In this fundamental error, I found myself able to banish the evidences of sickness, both chronic and acute, that were produced by fear, with such marked success, that I said, "I have found the Way. the Truth, and the Life." I appropriated parts of "Science And Health" and rejected others; I read with interest, old Theology, mind-cure, and Evans's Theosophy. There seemed to be more truth here than in Mrs. Eddy's teachings. It must be Truth, since by it I could heal the sick: besides, it gave me a more liberal theory for the spiritual ultimate of mortal man.
