The inexpressible joy and great blessings of divine Love are offered to all who are ready to receive them, and already there are thousands who have planted their feet on the solid rock of Truth and are rejoicing in the Christ-healing. They that have come up out of great tribulation are rejoicing in the truth discovered and revealed to the world by our dear Leader, Mrs. Eddy, who has worked so faithfully that all might have life, and have it, as Jesus said, "more abundantly." I cannot withhold in this harvest hour my gratitude and praise to God for what the truth has done for me. Something over fourteen years ago I was led by divine Love to try Christian Science. For more than fifteen years previous to this I had been searching for help through materia medica, but had failed in my efforts to find it. I had lived many days without food, as the doctors had said I could not digest it. I searched in every direction for relief, but the disease seemed to be a Goliath that could not be overcome by material remedies. I am satisfied that everything was done for me which the best physicians could do, but my case was a complicated one and considered by the doctors to be one of the worst on record. I had been treated for several months by eminent physicians from Kansas City, also by others in Buffalo, N. Y., besides using various remedies, but I failed to gain health.
I may say that I recovered sufficiently under one physician's treatment to walk about, but he warned me that if a relapse occurred I would not come out alive. I did have a relapse, was worse than ever before, and this is where Christian Science found me. It was then I learned that man's extremity is God's opportunity. I gave up hope of material aid, and turned to God, and in that trying hour my prayer was answered. I took my first treatment in Christian Science Aug. 8, 1893, and it brought me such peace and rest as I had never before experienced. I saw at once that this was the work of God, for the prison in which I had so long been enclosed had seemed beyond all human expression or endurance. My healing was slow, but the march from sense to Soul was grand, and full of rest and peace. The way was upward, leaving behind the suffering sense and gaining God, good. I was now preparing to live instead of fearing to die. The constant and earnest searching of that wonderful book, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," satisfied my hunger with the bread of heaven, and quenched my thirst with the water of life.
From that day to this I have never ceased to give praise to God, whose tender love and pity healed me. I had found my Christ! I saw that the taskmasters which I had been serving so long had lost their power to harm me. To-day I am among the happiest in the land. I have not taken any kind of medicine since my first treatment in Science, whereas, before, I lived on it instead of food. Now, as I look back over the thorny road, I see it was but a testing. Since I have found the great prize, — the heavenly riches, with health, harmony, and peace, — I have been willing to take up the cross, give up the material for the spiritual, and I have found plenty of work in the Father's vineyard. I have carried the message of Love to hungering ones, who realized the healing truth and were made whole. For this I thank God!
