In April, 1904, I was driven to Christian Science. I found myself on the brink of a collapse, and was fast becoming a physical and mental wreck. Physical suffering alone would not have driven me to take the step, although I had reached the point where I knew that doctors and medicine did not keep me well, but the mental strain, due to ten years of great financial losses, worries, and limitations, combined with a lifelong fear of colds, with lung trouble and the usual attending complications, had exhausted all my strength, both physical and mental. Christian Science had been held out to me by one near and dear, for four years, but it had meant nothing to me, and opposition in the family kept me from looking seriously into the subject. I did not even realize that I wanted it, but divine Love was surely leading me. When in despair at my condition, the opposition was withdrawn, and I was advised to try Christian Science. I hastened to a practitioner, hoping that I should find help, and I was not disappointed. I then immediately sought a practitioner in my own town, and received treatment regularly for some time.
While my physical ailments were many and visible, they were as nothing to my mental troubles. I was a personification of fear, worry, doubt, and in ignorance of the fact that in God was my supply. Since my first treatment I may say I have never "worried," and while the claims of debt and limitation were very real and of long standing, their unreality is becoming clearer and clearer, and I know that I shall soon realize my birthright, which is freedom. Through the understanding and light which is coming to me, I begin to realize that God is my Life, and. in Him is my strength and my supply. I had much to pull down intellectually, and while I can see much good in some of the paths that I have taken in my journey from sense to Soul, I realize that I came by a long and crooked route. Though an active member of an orthodox church, I had for seven years been an ardent student of theosophy, but I realize now that all the seeming help I received from this and from kindred subjects, had been of the mortal, changing mind, —not of infinite Truth. It took several readings of Science and Health before I commenced to understand the truth, even in a small degree. I only knew that T was happy and at peace, instead of being discouraged and hopeless; well. instead of suffering!
When I first turned to Christian Science in April, I had been suffering with a cold since the previous November, and was coughing badly —especially at night, when I had to sleep with medicine by my side and two pillows under my head. After the fourth treatment my cold and cough had entirely disappeared. These colds I had every winter since I was a child. They drove me to a southern climate, where I lived for fourteen years, which, while it did not stop the colds, had been supposed to have saved my life. I took medicine almost constantly, and the strongest tonics, including creosote, strychnine, quinine, and whiskey. Last winter is the first in my recollection that I have not had a severe cold and cough, and I have taken no medicine of any sort. Each time that the thought of cold has come to me, it has been met with a few treatments. The most violent neuralgia and sick-headaches have also been overcome within a few hours, in place of several days, often spent in bed. When I had been reading Science and Health about one week the thought came to me, that if what I read was true, I could give up my glasses, which I had worn for fifteen years for farsightedness. I spoke to my practitioner, and with her help I have not worn them since. At first there was much fear to be overcome, and it was some weeks before I realized that in God is my sight, but at all times I was able to read Science and Health and do most of my own sewing. We are having constant demonstrations of the truth of Christian Science, and God's allness, in the healing of colds and other ailments in our family; also many remarkable business demonstrations, which prove that God is with us in all ways, and that there is no reality in inharmony of any kind.
