FROM childhood, for eighteen years, I was subject to severe chronic attacks of suffering in my head, recurring every week or two, "which kept me in a darkened room days at a time, and made the slightest noise a torture. During that time, I was under the care of not less than fifteen of the best physicians, including some noted specialists, each assigning a different cause, and none able to give more than the merest temporary relief.
By the time I was grown, I was little more than a wreck. Then I began to wonder where God was. I looked out over the world of religious thought enough to see something of the conflict going on, and was greatly perplexed thereby. There could be but one God, one Christ, one Right, one true religion, for all mankind, but what and where were the proofs of Truth? I scarcely opened my Bible for two years, because I could not understand it, but during that time these words never left me: "Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think." (Eph. 3 : 20.) Either the Bible was true or it was not. The character of Jesus Christ was a great mystery. I stopped praying because I did not see any use in praying unanswered prayers; yet the promise was unequivocal: "Ask and ye shall receive."
Then I heard of something called Christian Science; at four different times and in as many different ways it was presented, but I found nothing helpful. I asked for books on the subject and was told there were none. The idea of mental healing seemed very beautiful and not strange, for I had already recognized that to be helped physically I must also be helped mentally. Divine Intelligence was leading me; if there was really such a thing as a genuine Christian Science, I intended to find it. At last, when a long distance from my home, I learned that there was indeed a true Christian Science and a book about it, asked for the book, and shut myself away alone with Science and Health, for one week. Of the absolute conviction and revelation of its truth that came to me, I can never tell in words. I saw that the teachings of that Book were identical with those of Jesus of Nazareth; that it proved the authenticity of Jesus' miracles by unveiling the Christ as Principle, just as available now as then; that the smallest demonstration proved to-day, as conclusively as nineteen hundred years ago, that Principle, and hence the possibility of its large demonstrations, just as the simplest melody of a child in its earliest lessons proves certain principles in music as absolutely, in its degree, as the rendition of the Fifth Symphony by a full orchestra. I never doubted that the author of the book had demonstrated just what she said she had.
