When first I heard of Christian Science I was bitterly opposed to it. I thought it could not be right, because it was not related to the church to which I belonged, but I took up the study of it to prove to a friend who was getting interested how illogical it was, and I knew the only way to be able to argue with her was to know something about it. But after I had begun to read the text-book, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mrs. Eddy, I never let it alone. I could not prove it was untrue, but that did not prevent my hating it, and for eighteen months or more I lived in a sort of mental anguish. I had been brought up to be very "high church," and my religion had been part of my life from my earliest remembrance. I had been taught always to believe that God was very near to us, that He sent sickness and trouble to us for our good, that we could not understand it now, but that we should some day. I believed He was a God of love and heard our prayers if it was good for us to have our requests granted. There were many things about God and Christ which I did not understand, but there were also many things in our every-day life which I did not understand, and I took the one for granted as easily as the other. I am told now that I never was really orthodox, because I had said I did not think God cared at what door or what church one went into to pray to Him,—it was the life one led which would count. When, after studying Christian Science for some time, doubts began to creep in that perhaps after all the church to which I belonged was not infallible, I suffered terribly; it almost seemed as if I must lose faith in God altogether. No one who has not been through it knows the anguish it is to begin to doubt—to lose faith in what one has always believed.
I asked for treatment in Christian Science for an ailment I had had for years, and which no doctor could cure, though I had been to the best specialist in London. At first I did not get the healing; indeed, I think it must have been a year or more before I was healed of that trouble, though several lesser ills disappeared, notably a bad stomach disorder.
People have often said to me that they wondered why I went on with Christian Science, antagonistic as I was and failing to receive all the help I sought; but though I often declared I would have nothing more to do with it, I did go on, and I know it was partly because, in the first Christian Scientist I ever went to see, I seemed to have found what I had been looking for all my life, some one who was true. Again and again in those early months of antagonism, I used to go back to that Christian Scientist, and with the greatest patience she would talk to me, and answer my angry questions and reply to my bitter remarks; and though she did not always convince me, still there was the feeling that she was true, true in a way that no one else I had ever met was true. But it was two years before I was ready to give up my own church and sign an application for membership in the Christian Science church.
