In looking back over the past seven years of my life, how thankfully do I realize that "the spiritual idea" does "guide all right desires in their passage from sense to Soul" (Science and Health, p. 566). Prior to this period I was a member of an orthodox church and had been for twenty-six years, but was becoming dissatisfied, I knew not why, with its teachings. I tried to place implicit faith in the Bible and to put in practice its teachings; but I could not understand how it was that our prayers were not always answered, for Jesus had said emphatically, "Whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive." So I read on, hoped on, and prayed on, with little relief. I became interested in spiritualism, studied it for several months, and became more dissatisfied, for the study of spiritualism had caused me to lose all faith in creeds.
At this juncture Christian Science was brought to my notice by what I thought to be a most wonderful case of healing in my vicinity,— that of a gentleman who had been ill for weeks with typhoid fever, and unconscious for several days. The night he was healed, his neighbors gathered, expecting to have to prepare his body for burial before daylight. The practitioner, a simple, God-loving woman, came in after night and had them all leave the room.
They would not leave the premises, for they felt sure that their services would be needed, but built a bonfire out in the yard. Just after daylight one of them went into the sick man's room before going to his home, to satisfy his curiosity, and saw a well man, "in his right mind," sitting up in bed, eating as hearty a meal as a laborer would eat, and consisting of the same kind of food.
