I feel the time has come for me to acknowledge through our periodicals the healing power of Truth. Several years, filled with health and activity, have come and gone since I was lifted out of invalidism and what was well-nigh despair. At that time the suffering, both physical and mental, was so great that I prayed for death, although a little son needed my care. All my life I had fed on Jesus' teachings, never doubting their truth or their availability if we had understanding. I did not think God was responsible for earth's sorrows, but how to find in Him the way of escape I did not know, and none of my church acquaintances could tell me. The problem was turned over and over in thought until I felt it would remain unsolved this side of the grave.
Through many years there were months at a time when food even in very small quantities and of the simplest nature caused constant suffering, although I tried all kinds of treatment at home and in a noted sanitarium without benefit. There were also months of nervous exhaustion so great I would be unable to sit up. I would be confined to my bed, or would lie in a wheel-chair, until the long rest restored enough strength to take up a few simple duties again; only to have the experience repeated, until at last even that failed and I could find nothing to build on. I think all my family felt the hopelessness of the case, and one eminent nerve specialist of a near-by city said he could see nothing in the case to offer any encouragement for recovery.
Christian Science had been offered by an earnest student as a solution, and I believed it was based upon a healing Principle (for I had read some of the literature), but I thought my own condition too hopeless for its ministrations. A testimony which I found in a Journal that had been loaned me, was however read over and over, and here I caught the first faint beam of light that inspired hope. The writer said that "when the patient began to see that the Saviour was the divine Principle in conformity to which Jesus lived, taught, and demonstrated, then she began to walk." That truth was the star of Bethlehem to me, for I saw that this being true, the same Principle would operate through all time for one and all impartially, as the understanding of it was applied, consequently it was here for my help as well as for the suffering ones of centuries ago. Then I knew what Jesus meant when he said, "In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world."
