NOT being personally present at our Communion season in Boston this year, I send my thanksgiving to God in this testimonial of spiritual healing.
Brought up in the Lutheran church, I was taught as a child to study the Bible and reverence religious things; but faith struggled against a barrier of human suffering and the idea that God decreed it.
When just past girlhood, I retired from the Lutheran and joined the Episcopal church, being influenced by an undefined hope of finding a fuller expression of the aesthetic and beautiful in religion, rather than by doctrinal reasons. The rhythmic beauty of the ritual service, the impressive music, even the softened light and changing colors in the old church, all appealed to my sense of harmony in contrast with the simpler and more austere service of the church of my fathers. I faithfully followed what I understood to be the teachings of this denomination for a few years, but was not more satisfied at heart than before, and the physical sufferings to which I had been in bondage from childhood became greater. Doubts and questions began to arise, and I found myself seriously considering the orthodox doctrines concerning the life and works of Jesus Christ, prayer, atonement, eucharist, and the resurrection.
