Mrs. Eddy says, "If we are ungrateful for Life, Truth, and Love, and yet return thanks to God for all blessings, we are insincere" (Science and Health, p. 3). Such was my state when through days of careless thinking and neglect of the truth there developed in me a morbid self-analysis, and as a result a physical condition which to my distorted sense assumed an alarming appearance.
Though I had been a student of Christian Science for quite a long period, a lethargic mental condition developed which reduced my active interest to one entirely perfunctory. I studied the Lesson-Sermon whenever there did not seem to be too great a pressure of material things, and went to church, but entirely missed the joy I should have had in so doing. Wholly miserable, both mentally and physically, I drifted for some time, until a member of my family urged upon me the necessity for help, since I could not seem to lift myself out of the vale of depression wherein I was endeavoring, though only half-heartedly, to give thanks for Life, Truth, and Love.
Error assumed another phase at this point, arguing that I did not want help; but this falsity was destroyed and I sought a Christian Science practitioner, whose first words to me were these: "We must know that God is all there is." I repeated the words to myself silently, and a weight seemed suddenly lifted from me. God's allness had indeed been lost sight of through allowing material things to assume entity and power. Through not standing "porter at the door of thought," as our Leader admonishes on page 392 of Science and Health, this uplifting, protecting truth had been blotted from my consciousness by the unrebuked entrance of a multitude of mental suggestions as to matter, and man as subject to discord.
