I HAVE often been asked why I believed so strongly in Christian Science. I will here try to give the reasons. My husband, while in service at the time of the civil war, contracted a disease of the eyes which, as time passed, became chronic. Sometimes sight was gone entirely for a considerable period, and he suffered terribly. At last, the pupil of one eye became ulcerated and total darkness ensued. During this time we were living in the mountains, and my husband was freighting and sometimes mining. He was often led to the mine, and by the dim light of a miner's candle he could work a little; at other times I helped him to dress, fed him, and earned all we had, at anything I could do.
I remember one morning, when everything seemed darker than usual, our rent was due and we had no money. I, accompanied by my two little boys, went up into a mountain, not to pray, as Jesus often did, but with something entirely different in my thought: I was more like Job's wife, who was tempted to "curse God, and die." I prayed that we might all die together, for the next world could not be worse than this. I had been taught that God was a merciful God, but that He sent sickness, pain, and trouble upon us to make us better.
My husband had applied for a pension, and after three years of correspondence and some expense, he received it. When examined by the United States examining surgeon, he was given a certificate, stating that the sight of one eye was entirely gone and the other had only one tenth normal sight. The surgeon remarked, "If any one ever tells you that he can cure your eyes, don't let him try, for nothing can be done for them." And so the years went on, during which my husband was totally blind much of the time, and became like one without hope or God in the world. Then I was stricken with inflammatory rheumatism and went on crutches more than a year, taking meanwhile all kinds of medicine, which left me with stomach trouble.
