When I look back over the past six years, I wonder how I ever existed without the help of Christian Science, and yet I am only just beginning to realize some of the helpful truth for myself. This I hope and pray to do more fully each day that I may help others, as I have been helped, to know that all true peace and happiness must come from within and not from, nor on account of, material environment.
I first went to a dear earnest Christian Scientist to be cured of sickness and pain, which physicians, with all their kindly desire to help me, had been unable to relieve.
I was healed by Science very speedily and wonderfully; but though impressed at once with the necessity for consecration of life in order to be always well, I was not for a long time ready for that. Instead, I preferred to take treatment when any sickness attacked me, continuing my mode of life with at best only occasional attempts to study and live Christian Science. At last, however, I came to see how I had been led "all the rugged way" (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 398); suffering unbearable distress of mind and body, "beaten with many stripes" until willing to say, "'Thy kingdom come;' ... and rule out of me all sin" (Church Manual, p. 56).
