Many of us seem to draw our encouragement and inspiration to better things largely from the experience and achievements of others. I desire gratefully to acknowledge the good I have received from, the articles contributed to the Christian Science Journal and Sentinel, and it has occurred to me that I should try to give something in return.
Christian Science has wrought a very great change in my life in all ways, a change which is most desirable from every standpoint, and every day its infinite possibilities grow upon my vision. When I first turned to it, I little dreamed what was in store for me. From the world's standpoint my childhood surroundings might almost have been called ideal. There is nothing but sacred and cherished memories of the Christian character of my parents, the simplicity and purity of my home life, and I early and naturally became identified with an orthodox church. When I grew to manhood and began to come in contact with the world, I thought I had good reason to be satisfied with my lot, and I probably should have lived and died believing I was one of the favored ones, if I had not found Christian Science. Christian Science awakened me from that mortal dream, and showed me the wide difference between the life with which I was satisfied and the Life divine. It unveiled the real character of my mortal concept of existence, and pointed out the way to attain to the life that was exemplified by the Master. An uneducated man might be satisfied with his lot, but when he has become educated, he cannot again be satisfied with ignorance. I thought I was satisfied with a material sense of life, substance, and intelligence, with its inevitable accompaniment of sin, sorrow, pain, disappointment, and fear of death but having caught a. glimpse, through the study of the Bible in the light of Christian Science, of the Life that is spiritual and free from any condition of mortality, and of the possibility of making that Life my refuge, I cannot conceive how I could again be satisfied with the old concept or conditions, if a return to them were possible. I am, very thankful that it is not possible.
It was only when materia medica and hygiene had failed to restore my wife to health, after years of suffering and when hope was about to take its final departure, that Christian Science was turned to, and that with reluctance and little hope of relief. We did not dream that God is really a present help in time of bodily suffering, but we found that He is. We found not only relief from suffering and despair, but we found a better understanding of God, of man, and of all that makes life dear.
