For many years I was a constant attendant at a denominational Sunday school, became a member of the church when quite a young woman, and was more or less active in its young people's societies. When about sixteen I had an intense longing to know God, but the more I questioned my own church people the more confused I became and in the end concluded that God was unknowable. Consequently it seemed that I could no longer take part in the church activities honestly, and for four years I did not attend any church and gradually drifted into a state of great doubt and fear.
A few years later a sister took up the study of Christian Science. I was horrified, for I thought it better to have no help at all than to receive it through Christian Science. While I was visiting her, she was healed of compound astigmatism for which she had worn glasses twenty-two years. Thinking that if she could go without her glasses, I could too, and that it was only through will power that she was able to see without them, I took off mine. For a year I struggled along trying to make myself believe that I could see, but at the end of that time the sight was very much impaired and I had constant headache. An oculist told me that I needed glasses very badly and forbade my using my eyes more than was absolutely necessary. For several months I had medical treatment, but there was no improvement. At last the oculist told me that there was nothing more he could do for me and that if I were not very careful the sight of the left eye would be lost within six months. I was also suffering from an intestinal trouble of two years' standing which medicine had failed to relieve, and from chronic neuralgia, sick headaches, extreme nervousness, and depression.
One day on my way home from the doctor's office I crossed the park in front of a Christian Science church and looked up to read the inscription on the front: "Now is come salvation and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ." For the first time it dawned upon me that Christian Science is a religion. On the steps of the church was the announcement of a lecture to be given there the next evening, and I decided to attend. It seemed that I had never seen so many smiling faces as I did at that lecture, and as it proceeded, such a sense of peace came to me that for the first time in many months I had rest. The next Sunday I attended services and the following week had my first Christian Science treatment, after which I removed my glasses and have never had them on since. Several years have now been spent in an office doing close work by artificial light without any sense of eyestrain or fatigue. The other ailments mentioned have also been healed. From childhood I had once or twice a year been subject to felons, but since taking up the study of Christian Science I have not had one. A finger, which as the result of an accident ten years previous had been useless and stiff, became normal again a few weeks after I began my reading. Last summer I overcame seasickness in one day.
