In my days of loyalty to the Presbyterian Church with which all my early life was associated in the strictest bonds of belief, while there were times of hope and comfort. the promise "Seek, and ye shall find." grew more and more elusive to me. There came days and years of trouble and pain, resulting in a state of compelled resignation and invalidism, with only the hope of a future deliverance through death. I was strongly imbued with the doctrinal belief of salvation by election, therefore the thought of the future was attended with dread. I was slow to awaken to the teachings of Christian Science, which came to me first in its mission of physical healing, nor did I readily discern that only through thought, freed from its limitations, can the vexing problems of life be solved. There has always remained a deep gratitude for the early religious training; for the familiarity with Scriptural promises, as viewed in Christian Science, has been a great help in demonstration. I was compelled by my needs to seek persistently. The habits of thought sustained by early instilled religious teaching are not any more easily broken than the fear of disease. We have in both instances, accepted belief. To many of us even a reasonable investigation of Biblical statements seemed sacrilegious. Once during my early study of Science I was led to read some of the writings of Jonathan Edwards for the first time. I well remember the satisfaction afforded when I found a possible line of agreement in his thought and my study, as follows: "Instead of matter being the only proper substance, and more substantial than anything else, because it is hard and solid, yet is it truly nothing at all strictly and in itself considered. The universe exists nowhere but in the divine Mind. Truth is the agreement of our ideas with existence, or, since God and existence are the same, is the agreement of our ideas with the ideas of God." This brought comfort, for just previous to this reading I had long and earnestly talked to by the minister of the church of my childhood on the dangers of Christian Science.
What an endless debt of gratitude we owe to our Leader who has braved and surmounted these difficulties, giving to the world "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," which has revealed to us the fact that there exist for man spiritual laws, that it is possible for him to recognize and obey these laws and annul all the so-called laws of materiality. Thus the light becomes apparent, and through the mists of mortal mind we catch frequent glimpses of the truth of the Master's teachings: "If any man will do his [the Father's] will, he shall know of the doctrine." Science "resolves things into thoughts" (Science and Health p. 17). Through the purification of thought, all our conditions are marked by improvement. I have watched patiently the destruction of a single undesirable thought, and thus learned why we do not more readily grow in grace.
An error which we have claimed as a personal characteristic, may often attempt to claim our attention, and only through repeated struggles is mortal mind brought into subjection, so that thought readily ascends. It is thus we learn that Christian Science is an educational agency, clearly explaining the questions which have so long puzzled thinkers. A noted doctor states in a medical review. "The marvelous kinship between mind and matter is a tangled skein, not yet unraveled by the death-house or laboratory." How many of us have struggled with this "tangled skein" in our battle with matter and its woes. It came in my early efforts through my attachment to a case of homœopathic remedies, arranged carefully for my home use by a brother, a faithful practitioner of that school. There were many temptations to believe in "intelligent matter," even after the case was consigned to a hiding-place from which it had finally to be removed and burned, before the atmosphere of uncertainty was removed. What household gods these are to us, hindering us from proving the sufficiency of God's goodness! Emerson points us to the Infinite, contrasting our littleness with the divine Allness. "'Tis pitiful the things by which we are rich or poor. A matter of coins, coats, and carpets; a little more or less of stone, or wood, or paint; the fashion of a cloak or hat." While the first dissatisfaction with the old methods may occasion apprehension, so long as it remains a factor in the life of the individual it finds expression in discord and disease. Herein we find the worth of personal investigation and demonstration, for every life becomes a centre from which is reflected God's glory. We meet many earnest hearts who have always lived on the hope of fulfilled Scriptural promises. The late well-loved Frances Willard pays tribute to the new revelation of Truth in one of her later writings: "We live in a strangely materialistic age, when thought is declared to be a secretion of the brain and revelation looked upon as nothing but a myth. Thousands of well-intentioned persons had come to the end of the rope, and were beating their heads against a stone wall, finding no mode of egress into the upper air of spirituality and faith. Just because the world had gone so far and had so largely become a victim to the theory that seeing is believing, the Heavenly Powers brought in this great re-action which declares the invisible is all-in-all, thoughts are the real things." For more than twelve years it has meant for me persistent, diligent seeking, and striving. My personal needs have compelled this. As a compensation I have found that, "Whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed."
