Many years of my early life were passed in ill-health until finally, I came to be regarded by all who knew me, as a confirmed invalid. Materia medica had been, thoroughly tested; but after suffering much at the hands of physicians, I "was nothing bettered but rather grew worse" until they gave up my case as hopeless.
About this time a devout man said to me, "God is life and He is love, and I believe if you would trust yourself in His hands, He would heal you." I asked how, but I could get hold of nothing tangible. Still the words kept coming to me, "God is life and He is love."
I had never accepted the popular theology. I could not love a God, who, I was told, made man capable of sin, then sentenced him to eternal punishment, for doing just what He knew from the beginning he would do. When I saw all this injustice, I was told I must not judge —must not condemn a cruelty which the worst man upon earth would shrink from committing, and that I must call the perpetrator just and good. Also that He made me sick and that I must be willing to suffer. No wonder I felt like keeping far away from such a God, and out of His hands as long as possible; but when the thought came to me, "God is the life, and He is love. He did not make you sick, but you have made yourself sick, through silly pride, ambition, human will, misdirected, and sickly sympathy which does no one any good," my attitude toward God, immediately changed. I caught a faint glimpse of Him in His true light. My Bible became my almost constant companion; I searched it for months, constantly growing stronger in the faith that God was Life and Love— that He could and would heal me.
