My life, up to the time I found Christian Science, had been a search for good, for love, not knowing that when Love was found, there would I find the Father—God, the creator of all, holding His creation in the perfect law of Love. My earliest recollection is of good; then gradually, as I grew older, evil crept in to take a place in my thought and spoil the harmony. I at first wondered, then was filled with distress as the sense of evil assumed greater proportions, and finally I became angry at the intrusion, which I was able neither to explain nor to think out. A strong belief in laws of heredity early made me a fretful, nervous, disagreeable child, subject to frequent illness and violent display of temper. I chafed under this condition of things, thus making it worse. In my school life, underneath all ambition to excel in my studies was the thought of finding how to express harmony, self-control. With the same ideal in view, I turned to Christianity as presented by the orthodox churches. I united with one of them, but experienced a keen disappointment when from the rites of baptism and confirmation there came no appreciable regeneration. Nevertheless, I remained in this church fifteen years, striving to know God.
Eventually I looked into clairvoyance, astrology, etc., but found nothing on which to pin my faith. Having been thrown for several years among physicians, I became interested along the line of Materia medica, and was pursuing the study of pharmacy when I was stricken down with an aggravated form of malarial fever. For days my life was despaired of, but toward the end of the second month I was able to travel north, and thence to the Pacific coast. Almost unconsciously I took up my search again for the ideal. Works on "mental science" were read, but without permanent interest; and then one happy day I read straight into Christian Science. The joy of that hour remains. At the public library I had picked up a book carelessly; then I became interested, absorbed. I read on and on, and when at last I laid down the volume and returned to my home, I had forgotten self,—I had found my ideal.
From that moment I never doubted. Healing of chronic stomach, liver, and eye trouble came from reading Science and Health. Later, with a few treatments, periodical attacks of throat trouble and an eruption of years' standing disappeared. But best of all was the gradual restoration of my confidence in God and man. I found the only baptism to be the baptism of Spirit, confirmed by "signs following." I began to see that in the exact proportion that I loved, was love meted out to me; as I was truthful, were all men honest with me; as I looked for and practised right, was righteousness returned a hundred fold. My gratitude to God and my love for our dear Leader, whose purity of thought led her to behold this "light that shineth in darkness,"—the light of ever-present Love,— is great, and can be expressed only as I follow faithfully the great Wayshower, Christ Jesus, in the daily life.
