The testimonies I have read in the various Christian Science periodicals have been so wonderfully helpful to me that in gratitude I feel I should like to add mine, hoping it may encourage some one else struggling out of the bondage of the flesh, Looking back on the years of misery and suffering which were my lot before I was able to accept the teachings of Christian Science, I know it would be impossible for me ever to express the debt of gratitude I owe to our revered Leader for the purity of her life and the unselfed love which enabled her to reveal Truth to this age.
Left an orphan at an early age, I was already a constant sufferer from bilious headaches; and it was accepted as a perfectly natural thing that I should spend hours, sometimes days, lying in a darkened room. The boarding school to which I was sent at the age of seven was run on very strict, old-fashioned lines; and the discipline was very severe. Any form of illness was considered indelicate; so the children preferred, when possible, to keep their ailments to themselves. There was a good deal of religious teaching, but of such a character that it struck terror to the heart of the small child. God seemed some terrible monster, constantly spying to see if He could catch one doing something wrong; and one lived in a constant attitude of fear, with a sense of guilt, for even the simplest pleasures were accounted sinful.
Under those conditions my health did not improve; but I became, instead, the victim of a succession of physical ailments, such as anæmia, fainting fits, chronic dyspepsia, and chronic constipation, with headaches ever increasing in frequency and severity, to which were added times of great depression. For years after leaving school I went from place to place in search of health. After nursing a brother, I had a serious nervous breakdown; and from that time onward, every few years. I had a recurrence of this most distressing and depressing form of complaint. My existence became a misery. The specialist I consulted could only suggest I should go into a nursing home, and remain in bed till I felt rested. I remained there a year; and even then I was only able to go about very quietly and with much pain, taking short walks and spending many hours in bed. However, during my lonely hours in bed, I had had plenty of time to think; and drugs having utterly failed to heal me, I began to feel out for something else. My first effort to begin life over again was to take up work at a depot for supplying bandages to wounded soldiers; and it was there a lady spoke to me of Christian Science and begged me to read the textbook. "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy.
