About seven years ago Christian Science found me dissatisfied with life, dissatisfied with myself, and attributing to my environment much of my unhappiness and limitation. It also found me struggling under a load of physical ailments. I was suffering from a very painful disease, which kept me confined to my room much of the time. I had been afflicted with an unsightly and distressing eruption on the face for fourteen years, and was also subject to periods of physical and nervous exhaustion. Physicians were repeatedly consulted, as well as a specialist for the facial trouble, but with little temporary and no permanent relief.
Through the power of Christian Science every one of these troubles has now disappeared. Any one of these healings was sufficient to prove absolutely that Christian Science, as taught by Mrs. Eddy in our textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," heals. My first healings were slow, and many times I wondered at this, knowing that I was earnest and honest in my search for Truth, but now it is clear why the error yielded so slowly. I was a person of strong will and weak physique, so called, and the study of another modern movement, though conscientiously practised, taught me to treat disease through my own willpower, which I now know to be the procuring cause of all discord and disease,—a false sense which ultimately brings about "confusion worse confounded," as it did in my case. When it could no longer give me relief, I went back to materia medica, and after struggling along for some years under this system, in intense suffering I appealed to a Christian Science practitioner.
The first treatment and talk showed me that at last I had a gleam of the true light, as the practitioner patiently and lovingly gave me a clear understanding of Mrs. Eddy's great labor of love. I procured a copy of Science and Health, and from that time to this Christian Science has been my only physician and guide to happiness. It took patient, persistent work to know the real meaning of "Thy will be done." I know God's will to be the only will, that it is good, that it is omnipotent and supreme; but to live His will instead of the will I had tried so hard to cultivate, and to know the difference between His will and mine, took time and persistent examination of self and motives. On page 326 of Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy says, "Working and praying with true motives, your Father will open the way." Many times I have found by weighing my motives whether self-will or the divine will was leading.
