Before coming into Christian Science, and as far back as I can remember, I was subject to ill health. When I was thirteen years old my parents were advised by several physicians to take me to another state for a change of climate. I apparently grew better, and in a few months I returned to my home. In the years following, as in the years before. I found it necessary to be out of school at least a third of the time because of illness, until finally I was so weak that I could scarcely walk four blocks to school. A short time after this weakened condition manifested itself, the climax came, and I was confined to bed. The physician, being unable to do anything, advised my mother to take me away again as soon as I was able to be moved; he held out no hope for my recovery, however, nor did others who witnessed my case.
In the darkest hour I heard of Christian Science. I obtained a copy of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mrs. Eddy, and as I had lost all faith in materia medica and climate I was eager for the truth. As we had only heard of Christian Science in ridicule, my family thought it was a fad, and being desirous of doing everything possible for me took me away again for change of climate. During this time, I constantly read Science and Health, but rapidly grew worse, as I was neither relying on medicine nor Christian Science, but was struggling between God and mammon. When Science treatment was asked for, I had been in bed for eight months, and was so weak that I could scarcely raise my head from the pillow, and fear confronted me whichever way I turned. I felt there must be a way out of this mental agony, and my heart cried out for the living God. In the words of the psalmist, "The sorrows of hell compassed me about: the snares of death prevented me. In my distress I called upon the Lord, and cried unto my God: he heard my voice out of his temple, and my cry came before him, even into his ears." "He sent from above, he took me, he drew me out of many waters." Christian Science was the messenger of Truth that came in answer to my prayers. It has healed me of the tubercular disease, heart trouble, nervous prostration, insomnia, and other complications, to which I was in bondage when I began Christian Science treatment.
My healing was slow. It required patient, persistent effort on my part, as well as the faithful work of a loving practitioner. We read on page 22 of Science and Health: "Wait for your reward, and 'be not weary in well doing.' If your endeavors are beset by fearful odds, and you receive no present reward, go not back to error, nor become a sluggard in the race." And farther down on the same page we read, "Final deliverance from error, whereby we rejoice in immortality, boundless freedom, and sinless sense, is not reached through paths of flowers nor by pinning one's faith without works to another's vicarious effort." In this seemingly long and desperate struggle, discouragement endeavored many times to gain entrance to my thought. I always found comfort in the words of Paul, "If God be for us, who can be against us? He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?"
