About nineteen months ago, my attention was called to Christian Science by a friend whose wife had been greatly benefited by it. Prior to this time I had run the gauntlet of infidelity, theosophy, suggestive therapeutics (hypnotism), materia medica, Ralstonism (more hypnotism), and finally landed in spiritualism. But never for one moment, during twenty–five years, was I satisfied or happy. I was constantly reaching out for the Truth.
With all this dense fog surrounding me, this so–called great intelligent mortal mind constantly informed me that I was one of the favored few who possessed enough independence to stand boldly out in the light and let the deluded Christians (poor, misinformed, slavish people, thought I) live in their mirage.
I went to a Christian Scientist, with all the assurance and pride of one who knows all that is worth knowing of spiritual things, and my shell had grown so hard, that it required fully six months of her most faithful work to crack it, so to speak, and let in the light. It was at this point that I commenced to get faint glimpses of Truth. And oh, what a terrific fall for mortal mind! All the dear isms and theories of the past totally destroyed! And what a terrible summing up! There I stood, healed of blindness since infancy, blindness to all that constitutes true manhood. There I was, on the holy threshold of Christian Science, seemingly without a prop to lean upon, the false foundation cut out from under me. I was degraded—morally, mentally, physically. I had suffered great torture for twenty–five years, with eczema, catarrh, and scrofulous acne, with variations of severe dysentery in summer and headache in winter. I drank liquor and used tobacco all this time, until there were few intoxicating drinks or varieties of tobacco that I had not used. Lust, hatred, and malice held high carnival with me, and I lost friends and everything else worth having, except my dear wife, and had it not been for Christian Science, she, too, would have gone from me, either to another plane of thought, or to live apart on this plane.
