LEAVING Lucerne one cloudy September morning, our route lay over the celebrated St. Gothard pass, the marvelous scenery of which was interrupted at intervals by the many tunnels which plunged us into darkness, till finally the last and longest tunnel lay before us, the St. Gothard itself. The clouds had fulfilled their prophecy and the rain was descending, but imagine our delight when, after the run of nineteen minutes, enveloped by the darkness of this great tunnel, we burst forth into the golden sunshine of Italy, all rain, all darkness left behind! Often and often have I thought of this experience as a symbol of my life. Starting in an atmosphere of religion and catching many beautiful glimpses of Truth and Love by the way, only to be enclosed from time to time in the tunnels of doubt, sorrow, and illness, till at last the utter failure of everything in which I had trusted proved the long darkness from which I emerged into the divine sunshine of Christian Science.
The sense of freedom from all doubt and fear, and the opening up of the spiritual vision, mean far more to me than the physical relief from the many petty kinds of disorder which had beset me for years. From all these, however, I am now free, for as the greater contains the lesser, so the spiritual healing includes the physical. My gratitude to our Father-Mother God for the precious gift of Himself and His dear Son, and to our beloved Leader for having restored unto us "the faith once delivered to the saints," is deeper than any words can express, and my constant prayer is that I may ever be found loyal, and may prove my gratitude by my willingness to do and faithfulness in doing the work which God has in store for me, whatever it may be and wherever it may lie.
Florence, Italy.
