During the twenty-three years that I have appreciatively read The Christian Science Journal, I have not written for it any of my many demonstrations of the facts of being, but now that the demonstration of peace within myself has been consummated, I want to tell it, knowing that my experience has not been unique, and with the hope that it may help some other girl.
Ten years ago, when just out of college, and with all a college girl's ambition, I found the world very different from my expectations. It was a very practical place for a dreamer of dreams. Feeling cheated of my birthright, I rushed headlong into the material conditions, blind to everything but the earning of money for my loved ones; yet always there was a longing for the other world, the world of literature and art and culture. I longed to see the interpretation of the characters of literature as given by the best actors; I wanted to hear the best music, and see those pictures that I loved; but always the belief that I could not do so without depriving others of necessities, deterred me. In these early days another disappointment took from me the expectation of those things for which every woman hopes.
Teaching in a city school, much work, together with many disappointments, urged me farther on in the path material, until I awoke to find myself a physical wreck. For several years the close of each school term found me with serious physical troubles and nervous exhaustion, but each summer in the clear atmosphere of home these ills would be assuaged, so that in September I was back at my work. Finally, forced to give up the larger school, I took a small country district, and here I demonstrated that it was not work but my mental attitude which made me ill, for I came home in June much lower than ever before. A few months before, I had drawn a piece of metal down my windpipe to the lung tissue, and this was giving me a great deal of trouble, together with a nervous condition and serious organic affections.
While lying on my bed, too weak to raise my hand to my head, the world of literature, art, and joy was promised to me upon my recovery, but this also turned to wormwood. Then I found through Christian Science that it was not for these things that I was really hungering; I found, moreover, that my attitude of self-pitying martyrdom must be annihilated in order to gain even relief from pain. Death was a very close companion, but not a welcome one, knowing as I did that some time, here or hereafter, every false belief must be met and corrected. Annihilation would have been welcome, but to go away from my loved ones just to make my demonstration seemed the height of selfishness; so I set to work to prove the falsity of every claim of discord and sickness as soon as it presented itself, —and these claims were legion! Such faithful persistence could have but one result, namely, healing, and today I face the world not only a perfectly well woman, but what is better, a contented one.
From a material view-point financial conditions are not so prosperous as formerly, but I know that God provides liberally day by day for His children. I have learned to refrain "from man, whose breath is in his nostrils," and to see man as the highest manifestation of good, and this gives me an outlook upon mankind which is helpful to myself and others. Through my understanding of the truth many have been helped in the last few months, and only those who have fought the good fight can appreciate my gratitude for this great peace and the fulfilment of my highest ambition,—the desire to help the world.
Mere words or phrases cannot express my gratitude to Mrs. Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, for her faithfulness and insight in scientifically explaining in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" the truths of the Bible, so that I have been able to bring these truths practically into my life, freeing me and bringing to my consciousness health and happiness, where discord formerly ruled.— Seattle, Wash.
