When the star of hope which Christian Science has restored to a burdened world, began to shed its beneficent rays over my darkened sense the incurable stage had been reached. Discouragement had assumed hopeless proportions. The memory of it all, even from this present stand-point, is a dismal picture which no doubt has many a duplicate, the wide world over. Kind physicians had worked assiduously to restore health. Everything in the way of material aid had been exhausted, until patience and hope, and money had fled. Faith in God, also, seemed to be taking wing. Years of suffering and agony had well-nigh caused a shipwreck of both mental and physical faculties; and the long, hard struggle for life must surely end disastrously unless help came soon. At this juncture came the call, like a voice in the wilderness of doubt and despair, "Come and try Christian Science!" Partly to prove that this, like all preceding promises to cure, would end in utter failure, the call was obeyed.
Could there be any balm in Gilead when for ten years I had been drifting farther and farther away from the goal of health, despite the daily prayers for recovery? Distressing female disease of a chronic and most aggravated nature, and a complication of other things whose name is legion, were the unpleasant companions of those years of bondage. But, strange to relate, after a few weeks' treatment, the strong hand of disease which had held undivided sway for so long, began to relax its grasp. Sleep once more touched the eyelids without the use of chloral. Strength came slowly back to feet and limb, and gradually they assumed their normal action. Head and heart were touched with a new and divine energy. A resurrection was indeed at hand, so new, so strange. I seemed living in a dream. Hope came forth from the tomb, Life lit up the "valley of the shadow" where I had been walking, and joy descended like the flutter of white wings, bidding me look upward. The pages of the Bible, so long obscure, seemed written across with the hand of God and were full of new meaning. Science and Health was put in my hand. It was like Greek to me at first, but I knew that it contained the secret of this great transformation which was going on within. Gradually, with the light which had already dawned, the mysteries of the book were in a measure made plain.
Ten years or more, as we count time, have passed in rapid succession since then, my pilgrimage in the retrospect has sometimes been through "flowery meads" and sometimes through "rugged wilds," but with no desire to go backward. It became clear to me at the outset that this was indeed "the Christian's destined way." It alone led to salvation from every grief, every burden, every sin. Therefore it is the divinely appointed way,—the way to holiness. We cannot choose for ourselves another way but must walk in the one revealed by Jesus and made plain by our Leader; neither health, happiness, nor safety, can be found elsewhere.
