May we never cease expressing our gratitude for Christian Science in the way our dear Leader tells us to do on page 4 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," where she says, "To keep the commandments of our Master and follow his example, is our proper debt to him and the only worthy evidence of our gratitude for all that he has done." The above words quoted from Science and Health seemed at my first reading of the book to ring over and over in my thought day and night.
I had been taught from infancy to love and serve the Master, yet realized the failure of his followers to keep many of his commandments. Years had been spent in deep searching and hungering after God, and every experience of sorrow or trial drove me the more to seek Him, until the Bible became practically my only literature. Having experienced what I then called "wonderful answers to prayer," there arose a deeper realization that it was possible to keep the commandments of our Master, even those of healing, else they would not have been given by him. Then I began to seek earnestly how they could be kept; but if I had been told that Christian Science was the only way, that there was a "Key to the Scriptures" to unlock the spiritual meaning of every command and promise in the Bible and make them a present, practical, available possibility for every earnest seeker, I would not at that time have accepted this statement. It was in a single night that the glory and pride of ignorance was cast down from its seat, when the "last enemy" without warning came upon us the second time and smote another tender little life. This experience closed the Bible and took my God from me, and the mental condition following was alarming. For four months I lived in the kind of hell described on page 588 of our textbook. Of such suffering I need say little else, for these words describe it sufficiently.
It was in the midst of these mortal beliefs of suffering that consent was given, entirely out of curiosity, to visit a Christian Science Sunday morning service. Not knowing anything about this religion, but with some preconceived notions of its being a wolf in sheep's clothing, or a false Christ, I decided to be on my guard for any deception it might put forth. When upon entering the church the first thing I saw was the inscription on the wall, "God is Love," all the bitterness and revolt of a crushed heart seemed to rise to its height. During the silent prayer, however, a wonderful sense of quietness seemed to fill the whole place, that raging storm within was stilled, and following this beautiful peace those first words that awakened me out of the long night's dark dream, fell on my ears: "Father-Mother God." What a gathering together of the broken fragments of the mother heart by the great, tender, infinite, all-embracing, divine Mother Love! I could not have told then what had taken place, but knew beyond words that something had come to me, for I was absolutely free from sorrow.
