A little over two years ago my first impressive attention was drawn to Christian Science by a lecture on this subject given by a prominent orthodox minister in his church in Englewood, III. Prior to that time my knowledge of Christian Science was very limited; I had been told of wonderful cures effected by Christian Science, but I gave little credence to what was told me in regard to these healings. All the information which I possessed of this, to me, new religion was gathered only from hearsay and other unfavorable sources, such as newspaper criticisms and frivolous allusions, so that when I accompanied my wife to the lecture above referred to, I was in a very receptive mood for anything that could be said against Christian Science. But things turned out very differently from what the lecturer expected, at least so far as I was concerned.
While going back in memory to the night of that lecture, I am forcibly reminded of Balak asking Baalam to curse Israel. The arraignment and bitter criticism of Christian Science and its author indulged in by the minister were indeed turned into blessings for me. My early life having been spent in a country where both civil as well as religious liberty was circumscribed and but stintedly accorded to people of my race, I learned to detest intolerance and became an ardent disciple and follower of the advocates of political and religious liberty of those early days. In fact, at the age of seventeen, I was one of the first to quit my studies in college and follow the flag of the Hungarian revolution of 1848, which was instigated and led by the illustrious Louis Kossuth. I am also a veteran of our Civil War; but I am now enlisted to fight error to a finish, with the help of God and the understanding gained in Christian Science.
Intolerance, and the denying to any one the liberty to worship God according to the dictates of his conscience, have always been regarded by me as an offence against God and man; hence, when I listened during that lecture to accusations, unsupported by facts, I resolved to make some investigations for myself as to the truth or falsity of the lecturer's assertions. As it happened, just about that time, through the inscrutable decrees of divine mercy, I heard of a marvelous cure effected by Christian Science, the patient cured being a first cousin to my wife. He had been suffering for over two years from paralytic trouble, and after exhausting all his financial resources, his physicians informed him that they could do nothing more,— that his case was incurable. I had been aware of these facts, having gained the information direct through my wife, when to my great surprise I learned that he had been completely healed by a local Christian Science practitioner.
