Three or four years before coming into Christian Science, I found myself drifting away from the religious beliefs in which I had been reared, which were those of the Presbyterian faith. While still thinking them true. I prayed very earnestly and watched very carefully, lest I should be tempted to believe in the new and higher life which was forcing itself into my consciousness. Through the struggles of changing religious beliefs and the observances of material laws, I found myself really sick and useless in belief. I found some rest and peace in the Unitarian faith, as giving me a more helpful understanding of the man, Christ Jesus, but I was all the time hungering and thirsting after righteousness. I sought relief from my physical ills so-called, in materia medica, in bodily rest. and in every way suggested by mortal mind, keeping my bed a good deal of the time. I think the doctors whom we employed did not find anything the matter with me. Certainly none of them gave me any help at this time.
I was very far from ti inking that my mental condition had anything to do with my bodily ills, but I remember thinking many times that my bodily sufferings were as nothing compared to those of my mind. I seemed to feel that somehow no one but God could help me, but I had no thought that He would, nor indeed any idea how He could. At last a friend induced me to try mental science, so-called. The result of this treatment was to bring me on to my feet at once, but, while giving me a wonderful strength and vigor of body, it put to rest all thoughts about God and His help, proving to me the all-sufficiency of man's help. I lost all real desire for righteousness, and looked to man and his ways for deliverance from every ill. For a little while I thought I had found the Truth of being, that God made man like Himself all powerful, and that that was all there was to it.
So began my life separated from Him. Every true Christian Scientist knows how vain were my struggles for health and happiness, and that, verily, my last state was worse than the first. According to Jeremiah, "Thus saith the Lord; Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord." During these uncomfortable years I was never very sick, excepting once, and I understand now that I was little else than a bundle of selfishness and fears. My family gave me every human help and sympathy, and of course I was thus kept from the true source of help.
