My whole existence prior to coming to Christian Science may be described as one of utter despair, failure, lack of definiteness in purpose and thought; a mental condition in which, while I felt a tremendous desire to be up and doing, I believed it to be totally impossible, for some reason which I could not understand. When I left school and went to Glasgow University, I spent three years there with the sole idea of gaining knowledge for its own sake. It was at about the end of that period, some fifteen years ago, that I became conscious of the fact that I was not assimilating any knowledge whatever. I then reached the conclusion that I was ill, and consulted many specialists in this country and abroad, but with no satisfaction. I went abroad for my health on many occasions, and was frequently laid up in different nursing homes, trying all kinds of treatment. In the last of these the patient was not allowed to drink anything for forty-eight hours, and then only a very limited quantity, and was permitted to eat only stale bread. I went through this treatment under terrible suffering, being greatly reduced in weight, but it was all of no avail.
After this period I became absorbed in a business enterprise which lifted me for a time above my illness, as I came to believe that I was in the center of a discovery which was destined to revolutionize the social world; but when, after a heavy loss by the syndicate, I discovered that the proposition was a myth, I collapsed suddenly, and was in a sanitarium for a time. After being under the care of a well-known mental specialist for four months, and being away in Vienna and Budapest with him, I gradually returned to my old condition, but saw no light, and things got so hopeless that on several occasions I drowned my suffering in drink, until toward the end of 1910 I was in utter fear of its power.
It was about this time that I came to the conclusion that I would look into the question of Christian Science for the sake of a relative, and I went to the Wednesday evening meetings in Glasgow. For three months, however, the testimonies sounded to me like words without meaning; but through the loving help of two dear friends who recognized my condition, I was kept in touch with the truth, and in March, 1911, when in London, I became conscious of a most wonderful change going on within me, which I could not describe in words. For a week I scarcely slept at all, so ecstatic was my condition and so absorbed was I in the Christian Science text-book, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mrs Eddy. The feeling was analogous to that which would be experienced by a person who had been bound by chains all his life, when they were for the first time gradually falling away. After this experience I recognized the power of Spirit, God, although when I first went to the Christian Science church nothing was more remote from my thought than that any religious ideas could ever have the slightest influence on me; but when I began to express unselfed love for another, I received the solution of my own problem.
