It was in November, 1906. that I was healed through Christian Science. I had been suffering from extreme mental depression, which had lasted six years. In this state, though the London doctor thought it inadvisable, I was ordained a clergyman of the Church of England. During my ministry, which naturally was a most sad affair, I was twice forced to go to Switzerland to stay for a prolonged period with a doctor in whose system I had immense faith that it could cure me of all my troubles. There I received the greatest kindness, but had on each occasion to return without having found the peace of mind or the health for which I was so greatly longing. My last year before seeking help in Christian Science was the worst of all. Although I was adhering to the strictest rules of diet, my food seemed to affect me to the most painful degree, and I was getting very thin. At the same time I took an abnormal amount of exercise, endeavoring in all sorts of unnatural ways to find temporary relief. Even God seemed to have deserted me, and I could not pray. When I awoke I used to dread the day, and I was thankful when I could get to bed again and forget all the trouble for a while.
Thus, when I had reached my very lowest state, when I was becoming less careful of the moral, too, because of my despair, I came at last to Christian Science. I had no idea of its teachings and hardly credited it with being a religion. Little did I dream that it was an uplifting faith which would cure me of all my troubles through changing my thoughts about God. After my very first treatment from a Christian Science practitioner I felt quite a different person, and so full was I of hope, because of the boundless good of every sort which had been revealed to me, that I sat up every night that first week till three or four in the morning, studying the text-book of Christian Science, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker G. Eddy. As I read I felt that I was drinking in more and more of that which would mean to me all the health and happiness of which I had been so sorely in need! Here was the truth for which I had been painfully searching all the time, though I knew it not — the truth about God, about Life; the truth which, because it is infinite, must make man free physically as well as morally, in fulfilment of the words of the Master, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." Thus it was that in only a few weeks' time my misery and depression had entirely vanished, and not even the shadow of them has ever appeared since. The food trouble also very soon left me, and I was eating heartily and gaining flesh rapidly. As good evidence of the transformation which Christian Science so quickly worked in me, my mother one day admitted that I was so entirely changed, both in appearance and temperament, that she hardly knew me for the same man. This was about four weeks after I came to Christian Science, and it was the more significant in view of the fact that my mother by no means approved of my change of religion.
I am thankful now for those "school days" of suffering, which made me willing as a child when the time came to abandon all the "doctrines of men" for the pure truth of Christ. My aim for the future is so to grow in the understanding of Christian Science that I may be able to obey both of the commands of the Master, "Preach the gospel," "heal the sick;" thus proving my religion as did he, scientifically and practically. This will best enable me to show my gratitude to her whose purity has brought back this healing gospel (good news) to the world.
