Four years' careful study of Science and Health has impressed me with the truth of these words of Professor David Starr Jordan: "The truth which another man has won from nature or from life is not our truth until we have lived it. Only that becomes real or helpful to any man which has cost the sweat of his brow, the effort of his brain, or the anguish of his soul. He who would be wise must daily earn his wisdom." No one can really be a Christian Scientist who does not live Christian Science in the inmost secrecy of his thinking. While reading the text-book of Christian Science it may sound very well to exclaim, How beautiful! or How true ! or even to be able to quote it ever so correctly; but to perceive, to understand the vital truth of its teachings, incorporate them into one's character, and make them the divine grace of one's heart, is quite another matter. It is practice, not theory, that counts in making a Christian Scientist.
In the fall of 1887 I was recommended for healing to one who called himself a Christian Scientist and from whom I seemed to receive much benefit; but he did not put any literature into my hands, so I learned nothing of the teaching of Christian Science. During the following winter a copy of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mrs. Eddy, was loaned me for a short time. It was a revelation to me, and it seemed as though the heavens were opened and all their glories visible and easy of appropriation. On my way down town to purchase a copy for myself, I met a woman whom I had seen a few times, months before, at the office of my practitioner. Recognizing each other, we stopped to chat, and I told her of the errand upon which I was bent, and of the marvelous uplifting that had come from reading the book. To my great surprise she advised that instead of getting Science and Health I should allow her to take me to a teacher who claimed to have improved upon the teaching of this book. After a number of arguments, more or less graphic, had been presented in favor of this new teacher and teaching, and sincerely desiring the best, I accepted the invitation to go and hear her. During the months that ripened into years, steadfastness to this at first fascinating teaching began to disclose one after another, points self-evidently and grossly incorrect. This was not seen, however, in any great degree, until after I had been persuaded to buy and conduct a magazine as the organ for this teacher's seminary. While in a state of disappointment and dissatisfaction, I attended the class of another person, who made the same claim for the superiority of her own teaching as had the first, only in still more emphatic terms.
After I had given ten years of earnest and untiring effort to helping humanity,—first in the work of healing, then in editorial and publishing lines,—divine Love brought me to see that the lack in this teaching was too vital to allow me to be longer either self-deceived or deceived by others. Being unwilling to continue to disseminate what I was dissatisfied with myself, I sold my business to a man who planned to conduct our periodical largely upon other lines, and was rejoiced to find myself able to cut loose from all past connections and free to burn all bridges that I chose to burn, but without the least desire to form new associations. This seemed strange to me, too, for during those ten years in which I was busily at work, there would come to me every little while, in the middle of the night, or sometimes during my busiest moments, a remembrance of the exaltation of the days when I read Science and Health in 1888. It seemed as though the memory of that time refused to leave me; but my many duties had to be accomplished, and with work at hand there was little time to investigate other things. The feeling came with such increased frequency, however, that at length, finding a friend possessed a copy of Science and Health which she boasted of never reading, I borrowed the book and sat up several nights to read it; then, to my great surprise, the owner of the book demanded its immediate return. Another friend offered to lend me her copy, which she "never even looked at any more;" but for some unaccountable reason I could not read this copy. It seemed to be about the same as a volume in Greek, and its only effect was to disturb me.
