I did not come to Christian Science for physical healing, but because of dissatisfaction with the concept of God offered me. My religious training from childhood was very strict, but I could never make myself love a God of whom I was in fear, and who, as I was told, sent so much sickness and so many disappointments into our lives. When Christian Science was brought to my notice, I grasped at the idea of God as infinite good, who never made evil. Then my faith in drugs had to be overcome. Being a trained nurse, working in materia medica, it took some months for me to learn to think spiritually, although I had always felt that medicine was successful only up to a certain point.
My first healing in Christian Science was over an eye strain of five or six years' standing. Two Boston specialists and one in England said I would have to wear glasses the rest of my life. Notwithstanding that the glasses were changed frequently, I suffered from terrible headaches, and the depression which to mortal sense accompanies most eye affections. My own reading and study of Christian Science literature did not seem to help, so I had two weeks' treatment from a practitioner. I expected an instantaneous healing and was a little disappointed at results, but one evening while reading an article in the Sentinel the glorious knowledge came to me that the healing was accomplished, although up to that time it had not been externalized. The glasses were taken off and have never been needed since. I can read or work for hours at a stretch without the slightest headache. I am glad now that the healing was slow, for otherwise the lesson might not have been learned.
Some time ago I was called to take care of a child with a slight ailment, but found on arrival at the house that two patients had scarlet fever, and three days afterward I began to develop the symptoms of this disease. A Christian Science practitioner was called up at once, and spent most of the first day working for me, with the result that I was able to perform the necessary duties without the patients' knowing about my condition. After going to bed that night my skin, which had been hot and dry, became cool and moist, and next day I was well with the exception of swollen glands, which were a day or two longer in disappearing.
