Having never yet written for the Journal and being conscious of having received much encouragement from the articles of others appearing in its pages, gratitude impels me to record my experience in the hope that it may prove of benefit to some seeker. Less than three years ago, I was induced to attend the Friday night testimonial meetings of the Christian Scientists of this city. (Kansas City.) I attended these meetings as an investigator, my interest and curiosity having been aroused by the healing of two friends during my absence from the city. At one of these meetings I was deeply impressed by the statements of two prominent business men of this city, in which they claimed they had been healed of serious disease by means of Christian Science, after having practically exhausted the remedies of materia medica. These testimonies were given in a plain, straightforward, business-like way that carried to my mind absolute conviction of their truth. I left the meeting knowing these gentlemen had been healed, but not willing to admit their claims that God had done the healing; I felt rather that some magnetic or hypnotic influence had been brought to bear, or that they were certainly the subjects of trickery of some sort.
Having been told that this method of healing was fully explained in Science and Health, I bought a copy and determined to study it carefully and exhaustively, to ferret out the fraud in it and find out in what manner the wool had been pulled over the eyes of those claiming to be healed. I am not conscious of ever having had any feeling of rancor toward Christian Science, neither did it excite in me ridicule, but I investigated it simply as a critic determined to lay bare what I felt convinced must exist—its underlying falsity. In this mental attitude I began to read the book, and many times midnight would find me deeply engrossed in its pages. I was becoming somewhat familiar with its letter and must have unconsciously been absorbing something of its spirit.
About this time an old friend called on us who had been troubled for years with disease of the internal ear. In the course of the evening she complained of the pain returning, stating that she would have to be excused and return home on account of it, but first asking me if I knew of any expert on diseases of the internal ear whom I could recommend. At the question there flashed into my mind some of the statements in Science and Health concerning the omnipotence and ever-presence of God; of His not being the author of evil and pain, and hence their unreality. After an embarrassing silence of a moment or two, I suggested she try Christian Science, which claimed to use the same methods Jesus employed. She replied she did not believe in Christian Science in such a manner that I was induced to ask, "You believe in Jesus Christ though, don't you?"—to which she replied that she was not very certain that she did. This stirred me so that I was led to voice many statements I had read in Science and Health and the New Testament about the power of Christ to heal, also that he declared he would be with us alway, even unto the end of the world, and I recalled that as I spoke, the truth of the ideas I was giving utterance to seemed very evident to my own mind.
