More than seventeen years ago we moved to a place where a Christian Science practitioner was our next-door neighbor. There was great need of healing in our home. We had a little boy whose feet had always been deformed. The best surgeons obtainable had treated him for ten years. Plaster casts, followed by steel splints, had been put upon his feet and legs until the little boy was distorted; and he was in such a nervous condition that at the age of twelve he had been unable to go to school, and could not read. My mother, who made her home with us, was afflicted with varicose veins and their attendant ills. The condition covered both ankles; and, according to the physicians consulted, nothing could be done to relieve her intense suffering.
A few weeks after we had been in the new home, our little boy came and asked, "Mamma, do you think God could make my feet straight?" I answered him: "I don't know. I know only that for all my prayers and tears He hasn't done it." I learned later that the Christian Science practitioner had been talking with him, and he had eagerly absorbed all she said. This lady soon came to see my mother, and lent us the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy. Soon all in our home were reading the little book. We felt it contained the truth, and that we could demonstrate it, as the author declared; and we began to apply it to our daily problems.
Sometimes we have had to ask a practitioner to help us over a hard place, but Christian Science has been our only physician since that time. The Bible and the Christian Science textbook, together with the other writings by Mrs. Eddy, have been our only guides to an understanding of this Science.
