I Wish to add my testimony as to God's goodness in leading me to this new understanding of His nearness and power. I can look back over a life of disappointment, and see God's hand guiding me through dark hours, on to the blessed sunshine of His presence. I was brought up without religious influence; still, my heart ever longed for that Christian experience which I heard belonged to those upon whom I looked with awe,— almost as if they belonged to another world. Little do we know how near we are to the kingdom sometimes in this very humble, honest longing. We can be sure that if our earnest prayer is to be guided aright, although we cannot yet see the Hand or way, we surely will be led to a higher and better understanding of God and what He would have us to be.
I finally united with a Congregational Church and earnestly sought the comfort I longed for, by entering heart and soul into its missionary and Sunday School work. After a year of unsatisfactory seeking— my health failing meantime, from several years of school teaching, Science and Health was put into my hands. Never can I forget the hour of that first reading. The words, "Desire is prayer" brought the comfort that, although I knew it not, I had been praying all my life. With the light that broke upon me that day, came physical healing; and, though I have passed through many trials and hard-fought battles since then, the glory of that hour, never quite faded, has given me courage to press on when heart failed, and seemingly all watchers had fled. My greatest battles have been won by holding steadfastly to the thought "And whosoever shall lose his life for my sake shall find it"; but in no instance has victory come about as I had planned. God often has other niches for us to fill, beyond and above our short-sighted vision, whereto He will surely lead us, past the shoals and temptations, up to the "perfect day."
"He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye. As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings. So the Lord alone did lead him and there was no strange god with him." —(Deut. xxxii. 10-12.)
