Reared from childhood in an atmosphere surcharged with the theories and hypotheses of materia medica, I grew to manhood with a reverence for it which amounted almost to awe. My religious training, while not as thorough as that pertaining to my physical welfare, was not wholly neglected In boyhood I attended Sunday School and was a frequent attendant at church; but I soon became dissatisfied with a concept of God which I could not understand,—a concept which I was told I must accept by faith and not try to comprehend. I therefore severed my connection with religious organizations, and ceased to give more than a passing thought to my spiritual welfare.
Thus the years rolled by, and the time came when sickness put its hand heavily upon me and laid me low. For four years I was under the care of physicians, and the last one told my wife that I could never get well. Finally I came to California, and here I underwent five operations within four months. For a time I seemed to get better, but it was not long before the trouble for which I had been operated upon again manifested itself, and I felt doomed to another operation, from which I was certain I would not recover. I will not attempt to enumerate all the diseases from which I suffered during these years; suffice it to say that they included nervous exhaustion, fever, etc., and it seemed that the recovery from one left me so much weaker that I fell a ready victim to any disease prevalent at the time.
Then Christian Science found me. A friend handed me his copy of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mrs. Eddy, and told me to read it. I did so, but at the time I had no thought of being healed by it, and was only reading to keep my thought off my troubles. No one who has not passed through what I have can imagine the astonishment I experienced, nor the joy which ensued, when it dawned upon me that my pain was gone; nor how assiduously I applied myself to the study of this wonderful book when I began to realize why my suffering had disappeared. Gradually, as the light of the glorious truth (so unselfishly and courageously given to a hostile world by dear Mrs. Eddy) illumined my consciousness, the great load which I had carried all those years was lightened, as one by one the physical ills disappeared before it into their native nothingness. I had worn glasses constantly for fifteen years, and could not recognize my wife fifteen feet away without them, but by the knowledge gained from the study of our text-book I was enabled to leave them off, and my vision is better today without them than it was with them.
