In every way would I express unceasing gratitude for the revelation given to this age by our blessed Leader, Mary Baker Eddy. About the time Mrs. Eddy was giving the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," to the world, my mother was teaching me that God is Spirit, omnipresent, omnipotent, infinite wisdom. Yet the Bible was an unknown book in my parents' home. My mother insisted that the practice of the denominational churches and the gospel as set forth in the New Testament did not agree, and one or both were wrong. She did not teach me to pray, and I have heard her defend her prayer-less attitude before her orthodox friends by saying, "Do you think that infinite Wisdom would change anything because I ask Him to?"
Time passed, and into our prayer-less Bible-less, but not Godless home came my mother's only sister, condemned by the physicians to an inescapable and early death because of a chronic difficulty said to be frequent and fatal to people living in the extreme northern climate where her home was. After her arrival she told my mother of seeing one of her neighbors healed through Christian Science treatment of a hideous tumor. The neighbor had later given her a copy of The Christian Science Journal, which she had accepted and made a repository for her embroidery silks. When the crisis of her trouble drew on, my mother reminded my aunt of her neighbor's healing, and proposed that my aunt have such help in her extremity, since the physicians offered no relief. Neither of them knew how to proceed to get such help; but, remembering the Journal which had been put carefully away in the bottom of her trunk, my aunt asked for it, and found therein the list of advertised practitioners. To make the story short, I will simply say that my aunt was perfectly healed in less than two weeks by Christian Science treatment, and returned to her northern home never to suffer again with the dread disease; and my mother went her way rejoicing that she had learned there was a way to pray with good results to the good God, whom she had ignorantly worshiped.
At that time I had come to a crisis in my experience. The skillful physician who had cared for me since my girlhood said that I would die within a few months unless I could be benefited by an operation, but the very operation itself threatened my life. Through my mother's importunities I was led to seek the help of Christian Science, and within a week was utterly delivered through "the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man,"—through the treatment of a Christian Science practitioner. The Christian Science textbook opened the seal of the Bible in our home, and the light poured in.
