In Isaiah we find these words: "Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else." It is, however, a common experience to try every suggested material remedy for our numerous woes, before we are willing to heed this call of Truth. This was my experience.
I was brought up in an orthodox church, which promised a salvation after death, but as my thought developed, I longed for a practical religion — one that I could prove here and now. Then came a season of searching. Whenever I saw any one who seemed in a better condition because of the religion he professed, I did what I could to investigate it, and honestly tried to attain his point of view, but from none could I gain that joy of Christianity which these creeds suggested.
As I look back upon a timid, unsettled, wandering disposition, an unsatisfied ambition, and lack of business success, I do not wonder that, with no definite anchor for my tempest-tossed thought, I should also have suffered from nervous irritability, chronic sick-headaches, and incessant colds. My physical ailments were treated with various material remedies, as well as mineral springs, sea and mountain air, massage, and so on. But the end was not yet. Finally, so-called mental science was offered, and I seized it eagerly, only to find that it did not feed my hunger, nor bind up the broken heart, and that it gave me no scientific method for healing sickness and sin. At the same time the Christian Science text-book was brought into our home, but on account of this other study we gave it little attention.
