Christian Science, revealed by Mary Baker Eddy to this age, literally kept me from the grave. It brought the light of spiritual understanding, and with this spiritual illumination of consciousness there came a wonderful healing, after materia medica had failed and abandoned me to the unknown beyond. The healing came slowly but steadily, until the understanding of God's allness, man's exemption in Christ, Truth, and as a son of God, from all material mandates, as well as every so-called material law, came in sufficient degree to destroy in thought a deep sense of the fear of death, the belief in the reality of disease, and to bring about the eradication of these unreal manifestations.
Since 1905, including a short period of material practice, I had taken, from separate medical institutions, two degrees in medicine. Early in 1917 an acute attack of Bright's disease manifested itself, gradually increasing in severity. This condition was vigorously combated with the usual agencies of the practice of medicine. Near the end heroic measures were employed, without success or improvement. Racked with pain from the beginning, tortured continually by the ever increasing fear of death, disappointed and disheartened by the failure of materia medica, I abandoned all hope of recovery. Further medication was useless and intolerable. Vision and hearing began to fail. Not a single physical organ functioned normally. Fear of death now deepened into an obsession, and with it came a sense of impending disaster, signs indicating the beginning of the end.
In this hour of darkness and despair, Christian Science was strongly and repeatedly urged. As I searched for a plausible reason for turning away from material practice, the thought constantly recurred: Medicine has given you up; now you give it up.
