When I took up Christian Science I had been seriously ill for many months with a severe attack of a nervous trouble with which I had been afflicted more or less for fifteen years. Too much work and too much excitement kept me in a chronic condition of partial exhaustion, and at three separate times I had been obliged to discontinue all work and all amusement for extended periods. When I improved it was very slowly, with many relapses, and the cure was never complete. During the periods of breakdown, and much of the intervening time, I had treatment from physicians and from specialists, but I never realized any reliable or lasting benefit. I was pastor of a church when I was taken down with the attack from which I was finally healed in Christian Science. During a period of nine months, with some slight variations now and then, I was able to walk not more than two blocks each day, to write but a sheet or two of paper and to read but a few lines of print, and I seldom talked more than twenty minutes at a time without very unpleasant results. Indescribable weakness and distress were constant features of the case, and several bodily organs were functionally disturbed to a marked degree.
I had treatment from a skilful physician for a period of over five months, besides massage and baths from an expert. Most of the winter I spent in the home of the Chairman of the Standing Committee of the church of which I was pastor. Both he and his wife had been for years great believers in hygiene, fresh air, selected and nourishing food, exercise, frequent baths, etc., and a more wholesome, sanitary home, or one where I would have been the object of more loving and sympathetic care, I surely could not have found. Two or three times during the winter they succeeded in inoculating me with a spirit of prayer and will-power combined, in the efficacy of which they were firm believers, and I tried expectantly to work out of my troubles in this way. As a result, my latter estate was uniformly worse than my former, as every time these efforts brought on a relapse.
When I called in a Christian Science practitioner, the 25th of June, 1905, I believed that she might help me, for I knew of several remarkable cases of healing through this treatment. However, from the partial study of Science which I had made at one time, I thought that the Scientists were using a power which they did not understand, that they were self-deluded, and I discounted the fundamental doctrines of Science as strongly as can any reader of this testimony. In fact, when I decided to take treatment, I said to the gentleman above mentioned, "I may be cured; but if I am, it will not be because I have no material body, or because God does not know I am sick." As it turned out, I was obliged to take back those words before I received any visible benefit from the treatment. Owing to an extreme difficulty about conversing and reading, I asked my practitioner to try to heal me without talking to me and without asking me to read Science literature. She tried this faithfully for three weeks, but I did not improve. Then she said to me, "If you are to get well, you will have to investigate this Science, pain or no pain. Your erroneous thought is assertive, and I need the help of an understanding on your part." As this treatment was my last resort, and the practitioner seemed so very sure I would get well if I did come to an understanding of Science, I consented to try, though I put forth many arguments and stoutly defended matter and evil, as a result hurting my head not a little. After three weeks of this, one night, when I was suffering greatly, the thought came to me that whether matter and evil had real existence or not they were no friends of mine, and that I would no longer lift a voice or thought in their defense. This was the first time that I had made myself somewhat as a little child on these subjects; that is, free from preconceived opinions, thus in some degree carrying out the Saviour's injunction. I became teachable. At first I affirmed nothing one way or the other, but gave up any positive belief in matter or evil, and in a few days I was a well man, stronger than I had been in fifteen years. That to me was the proof test, the logical demonstration of the truth of Christian Science. When my thought was free of the idolatries of matter and evil I got well. Within two weeks, instead of walking but two blocks per day I was walking five miles; instead of being limited to not more than an hour's conversation I was talking as much as there was any occasion to; instead of reading a few lines I was reading and writing with entire freedom and without any ill results.
