A Little over one year ago I was forced to resign my pastorate in New York state on account of my wife's health, her physicians ordering an immediate change of climate and suggesting her native country, Nova Scotia. Arrangements were therefore made for me to go to Halifax, my wife having preceded me on a visit to my home near Boston by two weeks.
Upon my arrival two weeks later I found my wife greatly improved in health, and upon inquiring into the reason of such marked change I found that she had been treated by a Christian Science practitioner in Boston. When I learned this I felt that my dear wife had either lost her reason altogether or that the foundations of her former faith had been shattered in the abyss of a reincarnated form of Buddhism, fostered by an ignoble woman. I blush with shame today when I recall the year that followed. I could not see that I myself, a preacher of the gospel, was more the agency of the evil one than our dear Leader, Mrs. Eddy, or my wife. Often I would tantalize my wife upon the subject and become so enraged at the sight of Science and Health and other Christian Science literature as to make me sick for days at a time. At these times I would refuse to eat, hoping to work upon her sympathies. I would tell her that my only hope was for her to renounce her belief in Science, destroy her literature, and be as we always had been. Had not I from my pulpit publicly assailed the Christian Scientists, my attacks being made before audiences composed of several hundred people, the papers throughout the state giving a verbatim report of all I had said? To have my own wife a follower of this illusion was more than I could endure, so I finally hid her copy of Science and Health and destroyed all the other literature I could get my hands upon. I voluntarily gave up my pastorate, thinking I might go far enough away where there were no Christian Scientists, and that soon my wife would forget her Science and we could live happily forever afterward.
During the last few months of my pastorate I found myself ailing,—I could not think and neither could I sleep. I began to feel that the world was all bad and that everybody was against me. As a last hope I was convinced I should try Christian Science, and the day I went to see my wife's practitioner I laughed all the way home to think how I had deceived him; and as he did not know who I was, my delight was all the greater. Soon, however, my conscience began to trouble me and I could not rest, although I tried hard to do so, until I went again and made my confession, and I then had a real desire for help.
