I had taken medicine regularly from the time I was five years old, until I was healed in Christian Science. I had doctored with twenty-one different physicians, and had used many kinds of medicine, but the more medicine I used the worse I got, until nothing seemed to give relief. At the same time my faith in material remedies began to weaken, to the extent that I began to lose faith in the physicians and in mankind in general. I seemed to be more dead than alive, and finally took to my bed, the last ray of hope gone, expecting every hour to be my last. I had read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, and had often wondered why people were not healed now as they were when Jesus was here among men, and in talking with the pastor of the church of which I was a member at that time, he said that the days of miracles were past.
Just about this time an elderly gentleman who had taken quite an interest in me, and knew the condition I was in, went to see a Christian Science practitioner on his own account. In one week he was completely healed of a stomach trouble of years' standing. The morning after his return home he came to see me, and told me the glad news of his being completely healed. He also told me that I could be healed, and in his conversation stated that Christian Science healed the sick as Jesus did. This appealed to me as nothing else could have done, and the longer he talked about Christian Science the more I felt that I could and would be healed. The result was that I wrote for treatment that very day.
The healing was very slow; many things came up which seemingly kept me from making the progress that I wished for, but I would not give up, and in the mean time I got a copy of Science and Health and began to read it and ponder its meaning. I read it early and late; I could not leave it alone, for in reading it I found that it was indeed a "Key to the Scriptures." Old things began to pass away; the trend of thought began to change, — from the thought of sin, sickness, and death to the thought of God as being wonderfully good to "the children of men." The fear of death disappeared, and with it vanished doubts, fears, worry, and superstitious notions of all kinds. I was learning my way in Christian Science. God seemed nearer and dearer than ever before. I found, as Mrs. Eddy tells us, that "when the real is attained, which is announced by Science, joy is no longer a trembler, nor is hope a cheat" (Science and Health, p. 298), and that good is a present possibility. Heaven was here, was everywhere present; life was worth living; I was a new creature in Christ Jesus. I was healed of kidney disease in the last stage, liver trouble, neuralgic and catarrhal trouble, weak eyes, etc.
