I HEARD for the first time of Christian Science as something more than a name, in June, 1906, from a friend who had been a student of the Science for some years. I had observed the appearance of perfect health in herself and her children, and I noticed that she seemed to have no anxiety about her children's health. At that time I was enjoying what seemed good health,—more so than usual,—so that the Science did not specially appeal to me on account of its healing power; but my friend told me that the Science had helped her to understand her own life, and had made her wish to help other people "because she understood them." She left us Mrs. Eddy's books and other Christian Science literature, which my husband and I began to read at once, with a sincere desire to know what Mrs. Eddy taught. In three weeks' time we had determined that our children must be taught Christian Science and should be healed by it, and that if our understanding was not sufficiently clear to effect this, we would wire to a Christian Science practitioner to help us, if the need so required. Since reading Science and Health I have successfully left off wearing an elastic stocking, after twenty-three years of its use for a serious trouble. I have also learned to read without spectacles, which were prescribed two years ago for a defective condition of the eyes. I have never suffered from any headache because of reading without them. I have been delivered from the bondage of a fear of sunstroke, which for the last five or six years had made each hot day in summer a menace to me.
But beyond all these blessings, which include the greatly improved health and happiness of our five children, I am most thankful for the overflowing sense of the perfect all-enfolding love of God, so clearly revealed by Mrs. Eddy's golden "Key to the Scriptures." The many rich promises of the Bible now mean what they say to my heart, but until the "Key" was found, one sometimes was forced to say to oneself, "That promise cannot all come true in this mortal life; we must wait for some of it."
This revelation of Science has so simplified my own problems, and my thoughts on every subject, that my life, already a peculiarly happy one in all earthly gifts, has become radiant in the knowledge that "if God be for us, who can be against us?" The "Comforter" has indeed come to many hearts through Mrs. Eddy's devoted labors, and I feel intensely grateful to her for the single-hearted loyalty with which she has striven to keep the channel perfectly clear through which this glorious message of our loving Father has flowed to us.
