It is now over six years since I first heard of Christian Science. Surely, there never was a home that needed Truth any more than did ours. My husband had suffered from a complication of troubles for nearly three years and was regarded as on the long list of incurables. I was a constant sufferer, had never known a well day since I could remember. It seemed that every ailment a woman could have, and drag around with, was mine. We are Swedish people, and reared in an orthodox church belief. My mother enforced the rules of her church very strictly in our home. I was taught that what was worth doing at all was worth doing well, and I worked faithfully in the church, studied the Bible, and prayed to God as earnestly as I knew how. I know that my prayers were answered many times, still I was fearful that I could not live consistently enough to pass the examination before the judgment seat of Christ. The fear of being forever lost seemed to be the burden of my life, yet I prayed that God would lead me aright and show me the true way.
As years rolled on and trouble, pain, and sorrow seemed to come closer and fasten themselves upon us, I wondered why God did not hear me. I would read and re-read the book of Revelation, thinking there was something in it for me, but each time it seemed more sealed than ever before. Then, with my husband at death's door, myself a physical wreck, seven little children, the loss of our home threatened, no knowledge of any supply, it seemed that there could be no God, since my prayers were not answered and everything was slipping away from me.
At this point Christian Science was introduced to us. My husband took one week's treatment and was wonderfully helped. During this time I began reading Science and Health, thinking I could help him. No one but a Christian Scientist can know what I found in that dear book, —"the bread of life" was broken to me, and how refreshing, how cooling and soothing was the living water to the poor thirsty one who had been driven by fear so many years! In about three weeks I was healed of all the diseases that had troubled me so long. The "Peace, be still," was spoken, and the stormy sea—the troubled heart—was calm. The joy, that peace that passeth all human understanding was mine. One day Science and Health opened to page 300, and my eyes fell on the third paragraph,which refers to the tares and the wheat. The thought came to me as a flash that the tares were the senses of sin, sickness, and death, and did not belong to man. Then came the thought of the sheep and goats, and to me the goats seemed the counterfeit of sheep as mortal man is a counterfeit of the real man. At the same time the problem of the ten virgins was made clear to me. I saw that the five corporeal senses, which to me represent mortal man, cannot enter the kingdom of heaven, for God knows them not. The wise virgins, representing spiritual consciousness, enter the kingdom, while material sense is shut out. In Science and Health I have also found the key that unlocks that heretofore sealed book, Revelation.
