HAVING exhausted all material aids and finding myself a complete wreck physically and mentally, without a ray of hope for either life or health, I sought and found relief in Christian Science, being healed within a short time of chronic stomach trouble and other ailments. A few years later another experience came which enabled me to prove for myself, through following the rules for practice in Christian Science, that God is an ever present help in time of trouble, ever supporting and protecting His children.
This experience was one of ten weeks' illness, during which I struggled day and night with the fear of death,—not that I doubted Christian Science in the least, but I did doubt my own understanding and ability, as well as that of the other Scientists, to demonstrate it, for we were all, practically speaking, beginners in the study. One practitioner stayed with me all night for six nights, and my mother left the house only twice during the ten weeks. I kept the Bible, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mrs. Eddy, also her "Miscellaneous Writings," together with the Hymnal, open by my bedside, and the thoughts they gave me were substance and life. The fear was so great at times that when I came across the word death I would have a sinking spell and would not be able to resume my reading for hours.
One day when this fear was intense I came to this passage: "Jacob was alone, wrestling with error,—struggling with a mortal sense of life, substance, and intelligence as existent in matter with its false pleasures and pains,—when an angel, a message from Truth and Love, appeared to him and smote the sinew, or strength, of his error, till he saw its unreality" (Science and Health, p. 308). Then I closed the book. and prayed God to uncover and smite the error that bound me and show me its unreality. Immediately I remembered having read on page 378 of some one who, "looking a tiger fearlessly in the eye, . . . sent it cowering back into the jungle." For the first time I realized that my tiger was the fear of death, and that I could not run away from it, but must face it courageously and see its unreality. I therefore called for the Concordance and read everything I could find in the textbook on the subject of death, and from that day on my condition improved.
