After about nine years' study of Christian Science I feel ever increasingly grateful for having been led to inquire into its teaching at a time in my life when everything seemed dark, clouded, and unsatisfying. It has made religion a practical, comprehensible reality to me, and has changed my outlook upon life.
At home I had unusual advantages in training in my early years, and had beautiful examples always before me. As a result, I grew up with a great wish to do some good in the world, and to have what I called a good influence upon others. I often used to read those lines of George Eliot, where she speaks of being to others "the cup of strength" and "the sweet presence of a good diffused." But experience, as years went on, showed me how unfit I was for any such mission: my faith was uncertain, my character weak, negative, selfish, and impractical. While humanly I still have many faults to overcome, I am thankful to say that, through Christian Science, "whereas I was blind," —for my religion was only a sentimental, emotional belief, that illumined nothing,—"now I see."
In her "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 307) Mrs. Eddy says, "God gives you His spiritual ideas, and in turn, they give you daily supplies." This is what I have seen proved, in both my own case and that of those I love, during the past nine years. In the measure that I have been able to lay down old beliefs of limitation, and to give up human judgment,—with its criticism, human will, and pride, with its persistent outlining and human planning, with its burden of anxiety, —I have seen marvelous things. Love has opened the way when it seemed closed; cleansed my thinking; overcome fear; banished resentment; and healed the sense of lack. I am glad to be a Christian Scientist, not merely because Christian Science helps me in the little circumstances of every day, but because I feel that this revelation is the great hope of the world. I have been delivered from futile, spasmodic yearnings and strivings to do good; and I feel that every Christian Scientist who is endeavoring to reflect divine Love can say with Paul, "A great door and effectual is opened unto me."
