About five years ago I became interested in Christian Science, and I feel it to be my duty, as well as a blessed privilege, to give my testimony to the healing and preventing of sin, as well as sickness. At that time I was in terrible financial straits. My creditors were numerous and persistent, and my purse was empty most of the time. The majority of callers at my little shop were collectors, and I was as though bound hand and foot. My opportunities to make money were good, but I could not retain even a small working capital by which I could avail myself of the opportunities that came to me. If I had been left alone for only a short time I could have worked my way out of my difficulties, but I was in constant fear that the constable would take the tools and stock I had to work with. A good friend suggested to me that my only chance was to benefit by the bankrupt law, and said that this law was for just such cases as mine, and that there was no law that could prevent me from paying my honest debts at any future time if I became able and desired to do so. I went to see the proper official relative to what steps I should take in the matter, and was informed that it would cost at least fifty dollars. I set to work to lay aside enough to meet this, but while I made several times that amount there was no time when I could have used it for the purpose, and have kept the constable off. I became nervous and sleepless at nights, and it occurred to me that there was one way in which I could get enough at a time to accomplish my object. My calling, in part, was that of a lock expert. I was equipped with all the tools and devices required in that line, and I had a record of the combinations of perhaps five hundred safes which were in use in the city in which T then lived. This thought grew on me until I decided to put it into practical operation. I selected my victim, set the time, and made skeleton keys to gain entrance to the building. Everything was in waiting for the time when there would be a good amount on hand. This was the state of my thought, and the first and only time in my life that I deliberated on committing a crime, and but for the coming to me at that time of the saving power of Christian Science I might have been occupying a felon's cell, or if not detected, have become an inmate of an insane asylum through remorse.
I think it was about four days before the time set to do the work I had planned that I learned there was to be a lecture on the subject of Christian Science by Edward A. Kimball of Chicago on March 17. (I shall always remember the date.) As it was free, and I was not sleeping very much anyway, I attended the lecture, more through curiosity, perhaps, than anything else. From start to finish I was interested, but there were two statements made by the lecturer that impressed me more than all the rest of his talk. One was "Christian Science satisfies." The manner in which he expressed these words convinced me that there was something in it which he knew to be true. That sentence seemed to repeat itself to me for days, and to-day it is the strongest argument in favor of Christian Science that I can think of, and it is a daily help. I had never known of a religion which satisfied, and for many years of my life I had been an unbeliever in the Bible or in God. The other statement which impressed me so much was something like this. He said, "I stand here a living witness to the healing power of Christian Science, and am indebted to Christian Science for every breath I draw." As he calmly and deliberately uttered this he stood there a picture of perfect health, and his face expressing love and gratitude. His calm and satisfied expression, his physique, even the clothes he wore impressed me so that I carried a mental picture of him as an ideal man. Could Christian Science do as much for me as it had for him? It was doubtful, but I wanted to know more about it.
As the audience passed out I was handed some literature, which I read before I retired. Some I read twice, and I thought I had really found something worth investigating. I had the first good sleep that night that I had had for some time. The next morning I went to see a good little woman who had often tried to tell me about Christian Science, and asked her where I could borrow the book called Science and Health, and she said, "I have one and will gladly lend it to you." She went into another room and brought out an armful of books, Journals, leaflets, etc., and said that I could have all the reading matter on the subject that I wanted. I read that book almost day and night for several weeks, took it to bed with me and kept a lamp burning on a stand at my bedside, and would read and sleep alternately. I afterwards asked this lady why she had not offered the book to me long before that. "Why, you were not ready for it," she replied. The following Sunday morning at two o'clock, the hour I had set to do the only criminal act I had ever thought of doing in my life, I was propped up in bed reading Science and Health, and had forgotten all about the scheme I had planned. On the day previous some money came to me from an unlooked-for source, and from that day my creditors became less urgent and everything seemed to come my way. I have prospered ever since, and the little Christian Science woman who loaned me Science and Health is now my wife. I have now the best position I ever held, a fair bank account, and positively owe no man.
