Christian Science came to me at a time of great need, when a nervous collapse and a stomach trouble were making existence almost unbearable. After a long period of slavery to drugs, diet, and exercise, my condition was much more serious than at the beginning of my illness, and my thoughts were dominated by grief, worry, fear, and discouragement. With much to make life beautiful, it had always seemed to me full of injustice and inequalities, a problem too hopeless to be solved; and my own seeming inability to lessen the misery of the world was a constantly increasing burden. God was in some remote, inaccessible place, if indeed He existed at all, and a satisfying religion I felt to be something for only a happy few. My church had failed to give me what I was seeking—to know what God is—and I could no longer conscientiously attend its services.
Several years had been spent in visiting churches of the various denominations, in the hope that I might find satisfactory explanation of God and of man's relation to Him, and at different times other theories were looked into for the answer that could not be obtained, but they, too, failed to answer the all-absorbing question. I had stopped trying to understand the Bible, for it seemed full of precepts that could not be lived up to, promises that were not fulfilled, and contradictions that were disappointing and irritating; so it was read only for its beauty and poetry, although in times of special darkness I would turn to it with a great longing that it might give me light; but I always left it with a feeling of still greater hopelessness.
One morning as I sat in my room, I was reading the Ninety-first psalm and trying to believe that there might be a God who could and would answer prayer. When I came to the verse, "He shall call upon me, and I will answer him: I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him, and honor him," I felt that, if it were possible for this promise to be true, the time had come for me to know it and be delivered from my misery, which seemed too great to be longer endured. With a strength born of desperation I threw the Bible on the bed, and on my knees cried to the unknown God to hear me, and deliver me, now.
