I have been intensely interested and greatly benefited by a careful study of Christian Science for the past two years. In February, 1904, I had what is called "a tobacco heart," and suffered from nervousness and constant dizziness until the following August. It was almost impossible to accomplish anything, and my life was miserable. I had taken powerful remedies without results for months. A few years before this I had resigned as pastor of an orthodox church. My work was successful, but so many conflicting theories presented themselves, which I was unable to reconcile, that I withdrew from both the church and the ministry and entered business. I had never read Science and Health, or any Christian Science literature, but had denounced it in public addresses as being absurd. The whole system seemed repugnant to me from a mortal mind standpoint, but I knew several persons, whom I regarded as being fully as intelligent and practical as myself, who had been healed through Christian Science, and in my distressing condition I was willing to accept help from any source.
I had for several years known the husband of the practitioner to whom I applied for my first treatment, and think she was a little more patient with me because of this fact. After discussing the subject for two hours, I was given a treatment, and the practitioner loaned me a copy of Science and Health. It took me an hour to get home, during which time I read the first chapter, "Prayer." It appealed to me as the most beautiful and logical exposition on prayer I had ever read. When I arrived home my dizziness and nervousness had disappeared and I felt like a different person. I had experienced enough to know that there was something wonderfully real about this subject, but as I read on, many statements presented themselves that aroused my combativeness. They were so new and startling that I could not see their meaning. I read and re-read Science and Health, accepting and rejecting parts, but something kept attracting me more and more. Soon after coming to Milwaukee I was introduced to one of the workers, to whom I referred my objections. She answered with the most forceful, logical argument that I had ever encountered. It was really refreshing to find a religious teacher who did not say, "You must take this on faith." She had a demonstrable religion, and one need accept only what could be demonstrated. This seemed like the way spoken of by Isaiah, a way so plain that even a fool need not err therein. The lady asked why I wore glasses, and if I would not like to do without them. I replied that I had worn them for sixteen years for serious eye trouble; that I had been compelled to go to five different doctors before getting them properly adjusted, and did not care to endure suffering in order to experiment with Christian Science. She asked if I would be willing to do without them until I began to experience the troubles to which I referred, and I could not object, so I took off my glasses. I have not used them for two years, and my eyes are stronger than ever before.
My very best friends are doctors, but I have not used drugs for two years. Christian Science has healed me of throat trouble and colds, and changed me from a pessimist to an optimist. A short time ago I was calling on a matter of business upon an old practising physician, and we got into a discussion of contagion. He said, with a twinkle in his eye, that he recently had a very interesting experience with a case of throat trouble, and then related the following incident: "A short time ago a young man about sixteen years of age came into my office Saturday afternoon, with a very sore throat. I was pretty sure that it was diphtheria, though I said nothing to him of my fears. I took some cotton and swabbed out his throat, put it in a glass tube and sent it to the city chemist for examination. The next morning I called up the chemist, but he was out of the city, and as I did not hear from the boy, did not go to see him. Monday morning, however, the city chemist called me up and told me that the culture I had sent him Saturday was a diphtheria germ and that I had better put the house under quarantine. I called up a young doctor and arranged to have him go down with me to give antitoxin; and, behold, when we got there the young man was well and had gone to work! The boy's mother was a Christian Scientist." The following Wednesday evening I related the above incident in the testimonial meeting, and a lady arose after I sat down and said, "I can endorse what the gentleman has just said, for I am the mother of the boy to whom he referred." The medical fraternity had in the above instance conclusively demonstrated, to mortal sense, that the young man in question had a dreaded disease by producing a "germ," while the mother with her positive knowledge that God is all, and her earnest affirmation that there is "no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter"(Science and Health, p. 468), had sent her boy to work well and happy, making the quarantine of the house unnecessary. Christian Science demonstrates its claims! What more can we ask? I am grateful for what it has brought me, and to the one who discovered it.
