One's gratitude for Truth is best expressed in a life corrected, yet the spoken or written testimony may be of help to some one passing through a similar experience. While I am deeply grateful for the physical help which has come to me through the study of Christian Science, yet above all I am grateful for peace, for a true and dependable philosophy of life, for the ability to say with certainty, "I know."
I cannot remember the time when I was not asking "Why?"—puzzling over the deep things of life, searching for the truth. As a child I pondered on the things I learned in Sunday school. I longed to know who and what this God was to whom I prayed nightly that, if I should die, He would take my soul. What was "my soul"? What was heaven? I was terribly afraid of death; I was afraid of all things intangible. From a sensitive, sickly child, I grew to a morbid, delicate girl, loving books and study above all else. Soon after entering college my health failed, and I had a long illness.
I was as one "having no hope, and without God in the world," when Christian Science first came to my notice as the result of my having noted the improved condition of one who had long been an invalid, and my reading of her copy of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mrs. Eddy. That first half-hour with the book was a revelation to me. I had found what I had long been seeking; that here at last was a way of escape, if what the book said was true! I was still skeptical of many of its statements, but I resolved to test them, and my first real demonstration was the taking of a long journey. The first day I traveled sixty miles by stage after leaving the train, and that night I had the first natural sleep I had had for months. The next day I rode thirty miles farther into the mountains. During the next four months I never so much as heard the name of Christian Science, but I had the text-book, and as I read the healing truth I applied it, until every ailment left me. I gained in weight, ate whatever I chose, and slept like a little child. I was wholly happy and hopeful for the first time in my life. There followed several joyous years, when I was a most ardent, enthusiastic follower of Christian Science. I felt that if I just clung to it, nothing could ever touch me; but I had yet to learn that "if we rise no higher than blind faith, the Science of healing is not attained" (Science and Health, p.167).
