Hoping that my testimony may help others, as others have helped me, I joyfully send it to the Field. When I think of what my life was without Christian Science it seems like a sort of dreamy existence, in an old and now almost forgotten world, and that I never really lived until I was born into the understanding of Christian Science.
I was reared by devoted Christian parents who, I am confident, lived up to their highest understanding of right. During my girlhood days I often sought earnestly for an experimental knowledge of the religion they lived and loved, but I could not find God to the satisfying of my longing heart, and as I grew older I concluded it was useless ever again to seek Him at the altar, for I had so sincerely gone there many times, and still He seemed far away and unknown. I, however, continued to beseech that unknown God for mercy and unnumbered blessings, and read my Bible at least once a week (on Sunday), purely from a sense of duty, and to ease conscience, trusting that in some way, at some time before death overtook me, I might experience real religion, for I always insisted that I would have the genuine or none at all. The fear of death and the grave often worried me, and I remember asking my mother, only a short time before she passed away, if, while seeking and trusting, I should die before I received the positive assurance that I was a child of God, could I be saved. Her sweet answer, "Certainly, my dear," seemed to allay my fears somewhat.
Years passed, and I believe I was as happy and contented as it is possible for one to be who is a stranger to Christ,until my health began to fail, and intense suffering at times made me almost wish to die. Failing to receive any permanent benefit from home physicians during over six years of suffering, I at last went to a famous sanitarium, where they pronounced my trouble a fibroid tumor and said my only hope was in the capital operation. To such a serious ordeal I would not consent, for my courage utterly failed and I felt certain that the shock of such an operation would be sure death. I remember with gratitude the words of my loving nurse, who seemed to pity me, and who very cautiously hinted to me to postpone an operation. I believe she feared it would be fatal. Not being satisfied with the verdict of the sanitarium surgeons, my husband took me to some of the foremost doctors and surgeons in Chicago, vainly hoping to hear a more encouraging diagnosis; but the same verdict was given by three others, who said that sure death awaited me in a short time if I did not submit to an operation. Discouraged, irritable, and miserable, I returned home determined to do as only one good old doctor, who opposed operations, had advised,— make myself as comfortable as possible with drugs and morphine the rest of my days. Without God and without hope in the world, there were no bright prospects to my benighted sense. My kind husband gave me every comfort in his power to bestow, and always let me travel whenever and wherever I wished, to try to make my life bright and cause me to forget as much as possible that which weighed upon my heart.
