I have been a "communicant of the church" since thirteen years of age, in mortal belief, but have ever demanded more of Christianity than serves to satisfy many. I have for many years felt that all of us had a right (as many as be followers of Christ) to expect the fulfilment of all his promises. If all were not reliable, my Spirit could not find help in those which I could not prove, simply because general acceptance defers their fulfilment to futurity—of which we know nothing. It seems to me that, as Christians, we have been content to get all we could out of materiality, and trust to realization of Christ's promises regarding "eternal salvation" (just because we had nothing else to hold to) in supposed conditions hereafter, that we knew nothing about.
For many a year, since I could satisfy my need with such faith, I had been groping in the dark, feeling that there must be Light, and that Christ's assurances of its enjoyment here and now must be true. I had accepted and asserted the conviction that our actual being here and now must be Spiritual; but I never realized the full force and power of what I said. I had no conception of the utter "nothingness of matter," which to me now is the grand solution of all that seemed so dark, so mysterious; of all that heretofore had seemed to present the " ways of Providence " as so utterly incomprehensible.
From this, you will see how ready, waiting, eager I was for Truth that was Light; and that when I realized its effects on my material beliefs, I felt I had found the "pearl of great price" to which nothing else could bear any comparison. To prove it real, no sacrifice could be too great.
