CHRISTIAN SCIENCE was presented to us when we were in the direst need, physically, mentally, and financially. I had been a very dissatisfied, vacillating, and unreliable individual since boyhood, early acquiring the habit of going to the saloon for enjoyment and stimulus; consequently I fell heir to all the results of such practice, from sin to disease and poverty. My wife had been an invalid for the greater part of fifteen years, having been in the hospital twice. She was operated upon, and the last time she was there the specialist who performed the operation informed me that she had a malignant growth on the liver and that nothing more could be done. She suffered intense agony for nine months, and the only relief she had was from hypodermic injections; and this continued until it required very large quantities of the opiate to affect her.
I now seemed to be in desperation, and I contemplated and fully intended to end her life and my own. But man's extremity was surely God's opportunity in my case, for no sooner had Christian Science been presented to us than I commenced to take courage and think there was possibly a way out. After a week's study and thought, we called a practitioner, and to my great surprise and delight I was able to see my wife rise from her couch of pain, dispense with her medicine, and commence to assert her claim to life as her birthright, until she was completely healed. This destruction of pain by prayer was a revelation to me! It opened up a new avenue of thought, and I was eagerly reading the pages of Mrs. Eddy's book, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" looking for its substance, when a great spiritual uplifting came to me, for I realized that this truth is the "pearl of great price," the truth about God and His creation. I saw that God is Mind, divine Principle, and that this Principle is ever perfect and harmonious, ruling men now: and that it was ruling in my consciousness to a small degree, for my great depression had left me, and with it the desire for drinking, smoking, and chewing.
This was over five years ago, and I find myself searching more diligently this book which holds the key to that other book of Life, the Bible. Although we have had many trials, God has been our only refuge in every case. Words cannot express our gratitude to every channel through which this truth has come to us, and we realize that the best that we can do is each day to live nearer to the teaching of Christian Science.
