In a remote Canadian province I heard, for the first time, the words Christian and Science used con-jointly, and at the same time saw a copy of the book Science and Health. A few questions elicited the statement: "It is founded upon Christ and the Bible," which was all that was needed to bring me, at the end of two weeks, to the "Athens of America" to learn more about this "more excellent way."
A deep desire for Truth, and an early family training seemed to have fitted me to receive, at once, the teaching as a revelation from God; and it was indeed the second coming of Christ (Truth), and "He came with power and great glory, and all His holy angels with him." The regeneration, or birth of Spirit was manifest to all who knew me. A dear old Methodist sister said, "I should say you had been converted.'' But this recognition and admission of Divine power has never shaken her faith and trust in the creeds and doctrines of her church; nor enabled her to see, or admit any good in Christian Science. Listening, from early childhood, to the wrongs of the oppressed, and taught the righteousness of the struggle for the abolition of slavery in our country; many years of church work; and later active labor in the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, seem now only to have been a preparatory school for the self-sacrificing service required of the pioneers in this emancipation of humanity from the thraldom of materiality, and the effort to rouse from slumber those who may turn, and, if possible, make your life pay the penalty for disturbing them.
Immediately after a second course of instruction in this sacred Science, I returned to my home with no other thought than to tell the glorious revelation of Truth to all who would listen. But alas! the tares of "mind-cure" had been thickly sown in the city, far and wide, and all under the name of Christian Science. Two recreant students, from the College, had taught large classes, filling the minds of their students with seeds of enmity and distrust of its Founder, find all who remained loyal to her. The harvest of hatred, envy and malice, from such seed-sowing, let it he thankfully said, has been small; for the most persistent efforts to defeat the advance of Truth by these misguided ones, have most signally failed.
