A sense of gratitude prompts me to say that Christian Science brought me my first glimpse of anything certain in the way of happiness and health. It immediately gave me a fixed thought-basis, from which intelligently to work out what we call "life's problems," which then seemed desperately complex. Hope succeeded mental despair so promptly that at first it seemed too good to be true. I learned later that all trouble is too bad to be true, and can be dispelled. Nearly four years of glad and diligent study, a study still pursued, has brought me practical help in every need of every day, and a deeper conviction of its truth.
I first entered a practitioner's office by seeming chance, with no knowledge of or interest in Christian Science, with no faith in its power, and with only a half-contemptuous willingness to try anything that might alleviate the misery and physical pain which I suffered. During that first treatment a pain in my side which had been almost constant for two years disappeared and has never recurred; and from the first few sentences of loving explanation I knew I had found the satisfying philosophy I had vainly sought in books and conversation. I worked the remainder of the day, went home at night with a borrowed copy of Science and Health, read until nearly morning, and realized that here was the religion I had failed to discover in or outside of dogmatic theology,—a religion based wholly on the Bible, which it interpreted logically, and which, when I most needed it, fulfilled its promises to save from misery, mental and physical.
After about two weeks of daily treatment, with explanation of the Principle, and while reading the textbook with avidity, I was cured of a serious kidney trouble for which I had long been dieting and taking medicine. It has never returned, and from the first I ate anything that others ate. Without especial treatment, constant throat difficulty, a sequel to an illness in childhood with frequent later attacks, disappeared. In a few days I forgot and have not since needed the glasses to which three good oculists had given me a life sentence. The sight of my left eye, which had ' been so injured in childhood that without the other eye I could barely read the headlines in a newspaper, is gradually returning. I use my eyes constantly, reading and writing many hours daily and without strain. Though Christian Science is by many said to be useful in nervous troubles only, it is interesting to record that my nervous trouble was last to yield, though suffering from it has ceased. I gained considerably in weight within three months, and was stronger and more enduring in every way. Always tired before, I now hardly know what weariness is.
