In expressing my gratitude for Christian Science I know not how to enumerate the blessings that have come to me during the past ten years, so many, so rich, and so full have these blessings been. From my earliest childhood I was instructed in the Scriptures, my father being a clergyman; and for years the teachings of the Protestant faith seemed to satisfy. But when trouble and sickness and sorrow came, I found no comfort and no relief. The Bible was put aside, no prayer was offered, and God was indeed a God afar off.
Material means of every kind were resorted to,—travel by land and sea, a constant change of scene and climate, physicians and cures innumerable,—but all to no avail, the physical condition becoming more serious and complicated as time went on. In a providential manner Christian Science was presented to me, and help was sought and most lovingly given. My healing was very gradual, and came about only as thought-processes changed. I have been healed of a number of minor difficulties, and of a serious organic condition, which had been pronounced incurable.
All my life, previous to this healing, I had disliked and at times feared to be alone. This has entirely changed; and I now count it a privilege to be alone, in the joyous consciousness of ever present Love. I have learned that to be alone with God is not loneliness; and that, as one writer has said, "the understanding of how to be alone with God, will heal loneliness." I am grateful for the new understanding of God, as my Father-Mother, and for the nearness and certainty of this relationship that has come to me through the study of this great truth. I have come to realize that God is not afar off, but near at hand, an ever present healing power, that I, as His child, partake of His very nature, and that He empowers me for service. I rejoice that I am learning to trust this FatherMother more simply and more humbly. I find that when simple, childlike faith fills one's consciousness, fear—our great enemy—can gain no permanent foothold.
