During weary years of invalidism, when the days were passed in dread of the long sleepless nights, Jesus' sweet invitation, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest," would come to me over and over with tantalizing persistency. Tantalizing because seemingly so hopelessly beyond reach. How often had I prayed for relief from pain, for restful sleep. Joyfully would I accept the invitation and receive the longed-for rest if I only knew how.
Baptized in my infancy in the Presbyterian Church, and early in my young womanhood uniting with that body, I had great faith in prayer, and many and fervent were the prayers sent up to the "Throne of Grace" for the recovery of my health. Having devoted years of study and practice to the mastery of an art that was just beginning to yield gratifying results, with the future bright and glowing, failing health came as a death-blow to all my ardent hopes. All that loving hearts and hands could do for me had been done; materia medica, of schools both allopathic and homœopathic, skilful surgery, change of climate with mineral water and baths, all had failed. With my last chance, another surgical operation of doubtful result, with lost faith in a God who either could not or would not answer the prayer of his suffering child, the way seemed dark indeed. But truly "The darkest hour is just before the dawn." With a feeling of shame for what I then considered my weakness, I went to a Christian Science healer, having little faith in what, in my ignorance, I regarded as a very foolish method, but very willing to be healed if such a seemingly impossible thing could be done.
And the Scientist was not long in proving that "With God all things are possible," for in five treatments I, who had suffered untold miseries for five years, was free from suffering; and in less than two weeks had walked a distance of twenty blocks. But the physical healing was not all of the blessing. My loving healer in the first five talks had given me an understanding of God and Life that was indeed a revelation. She taught me that I was God's spiritual child and subject only to spiritual law, and that I could never work out my salvation—salvation from sin, sickness, and death—by the law of matter, by the law that would hold man forever as sinful, sick, and dying. Then began the search in our wonderful text-book, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," by Mary Baker Eddy, for the law of Life. And, dear reader, I found therein no new law opposed to scriptural teachings, but just the old Bible truths that Jesus taught, but so freed from man-made creeds and doctrines that I discerned the Christ anew as the Way, the Truth, and the Life. The Way that leads from the belief of life in matter to the understanding of Life in the divine Mind; the Truth that breaks the bands of sin and sickness and gives the freedom that is man's spiritual birthright; the Life that knows no death but is "hid with Christ in God." I learned, too, in this little book, why my prayers were not answered. They were the petitions of a blind belief, and rose no higher than the mortal mind's conception of an infinitely magnified corporeal personality. But the prayer of the Scientist who healed me was that of understanding, even the understanding of Life, Truth, and Love, "The prayer that gains the ear and right hand of omnipotence and calls down infinite blessings" (Science and Health).
