Whenever I stop to recall all the blessings which I possess of health, wholeness, and harmony, it is to feel inexpressibly grateful to Christian Science and its demonstrable teaching of man's right relation to God, because before I knew of Christian Science I had none of these things. My health had been bad for a number of years, lapsing occasionally into periods of actual invalidism, and I grew out of boyhood under the verdict of orthodox medicine that I must always expect to live a life of very restricted activity and devoid of all strenuous exertion and extremes of climate.
With regard to religious beliefs I was altogether a groper in an outer darkness. I had dismissed orthodox teaching as incomprehensible and the Bible as history not applicable to the present day, and in their place I had tried to establish a philosophy of doing my best and taking the consequences, which, like most philosophies of the kind, was remarkable only for its failures. It was to such a physical and mental condition as this that Christian Science came and altered my whole outlook on life. It brought me, however, no sudden or spectacular overthrow of disease, and for this I have learned to be deeply grateful. Every step had to be taken and often retaken again and again before I was able to say that I was free from some restriction or some fear which had grown to be part of my life during the past ten years, and in so doing I have learned the truth of that wonderful passage on page 410 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy: "Every trial of our faith in God makes us stronger. The more difficult seems the material condition to be overcome by Spirit, the stronger should be our faith and the purer our love."
To-day I am grateful to say that my health grows better and better with every year. Many of the old fears and falsities have gone altogether and others are surely going in the light of Christian Science teaching of their nothingness. Christian Science has taught me to love the Bible and to know that in connection with the Christian Science textbook it becomes an infallible guide by means of which we may not only work out our own salvation but help others to work out theirs.
