As I sit this Sunday afternoon in the quiet of my room and my thoughts wander to the past. I recall that from childhood I have yearned for something better than speculation regarding man and his relationship to the Almighty. I lived in fear of a God whom I thought revengeful and austere, reaping where He had not sown and gathering where He had not strewn,—a God whose love was mingled with an element of severity infinitely greater than I could realize. I think of the times when I would lay my head upon my pillow thinking that the Son of Man, as I had been taught, would come in the twinkling of an eye ere the morning dawned, and I, unprepared to meet him, would be found like the foolish virgins in the parable.
I think also of the many, many times I have prayed for that inflowing of the Holy Spirit, as at Pentecost, whereby I should be so filled with holiness that sin would no longer have dominion over me, and I could triumph over the world, the flesh, and the devil. But it seemed as if something held me back, some weight, some load; so assuring myself that this was my great sin and wickedness, and that I was too much under its influence to gain the longed-for spirituality which I had heard so earnestly preached by good men, I at last made the effort to content myself with the thought that not by my own righteousness should I enter the kingdom, for I had been taught that at best my righteousness was but "as filthy rags," but "by the cleansing blood of Jesus," by his victory over the sin of the world, was I to be made fit for the kingdom of heaven where I was to "see the King in His beauty." This was by no means an easy problem to my troubled consciousness as to how my shortcomings were to be atoned for by Christ and an angry God appeased. So in doubt and uncertainty, sometimes hopeful, sometimes despondent, I wandered on in this state of mind, performing my Christian duties as well as I could, and remembering to my great grief that I could not have had that longed-for "filling of the Holy Ghost" which was to make me capable of resisting sin, and which I was admonished to pray for and hope for.
While yet in this realm of doubt and uncertainty, Christian Science was brought to my notice. With the first faint glimpse of what it all meant, I commenced the study of the lessons as given in the Christian Science Quarterly. It was not long before there seemed to be a cessation of the fear of a wrathful God, and this fear finally disappeared. I could sing with a better understanding, "Our God is Love."
