I wish to add my grateful testimony to that of the thousands of mothers who through Christian Science are being daily delivered from the torture and bondage of fear concerning their children. Although a close Bible student, teacher of a Bible class, and the wife of a minister, I gradually awoke to the realization that so far as our children were concerned I was without the least practical trust in the presence and power of God. I was afraid of everything for them,—no wind blew, no sun shone, no meal was spread, no hour went by, without the dark, creeping presence of a deadly fear of some sort. Even when they were asleep, I felt unsettled, for the most difficult complications seemed to arise at night. I felt that the children were given me for a discipline; that if I could keep kind and good, and was desperately zealous in good works, often making myself do the most distasteful things in the name of religion, that thus I could possibly appease God and keep the children. Walking this dizzy way, I had no time nor did I really know how to love God, and now I can see how it would have been utterly impossible for any one to have loved my concept of God. Mrs. Eddy's definition of God, "The Christian Science God is universal, eternal, divine Love, which changeth not and causeth no evil, disease, nor death" (Science and Health, p. 140), came to me like an outburst of glory, revolutionizing my thought and gradually changing my troubled pleadings to daily avowals of God's goodness and mercy.
It is now three and a half years since that morning when the children and I exchanged the gargles and medicines for God. There was an epidemic of throat trouble in the town in which we lived. My fear arose to a climax of suffering, and I sought God as never before in my life. A few days afterward a copy of Science and Health came unexpectedly into my possession. There was much to be corrected in my own thought, and while we have had many and varied experiences, we have also had strong, faithful help from those advanced in the knowledge of this wonderful truth, and I can say that we have never had the slightest inclination to trust aught but God. Mrs. Eddy's words on page 571 of Science and Health, "Know thyself, and God will supply the wisdom and the occasion for a victory over evil," taking them to mean not only to know one's self, which is of course most important, but also the knowing,—these have been the open sesame to all seeming obstructions; and when the halts have seemed long and the walls brass, I have found that it was only because I was not steadfastly knowing the truth myself. So, like St. Paul, "I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus."
With the Bible and Science and Health as daily guides, and a Leader who is constantly unfolding the Christ-idea to her followers, I know that the way is safe and the warfare glorious. Words seem poor whenever I endeavor to make a verbal expression of thanks to dear Mrs. Eddy, but I am sure that the picture then and the picture now would repay her beyond any words of mine. My daily prayer is that I may be used as a channel for this healing truth to reach those who are waiting to "be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God."
