My first healing in Christian Science was the almost unconscious laying off of glasses while reading "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy. I had worn them for study and work for over five years; but I simply forgot I had been in the habit of wearing them.
Christian Science has been the means of discovering for me the universal, all-loving God. I had always believed such a God existed, but was quite certain the churches known to my boyhood had not found Him. Truth, as revealed by our Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, has given me an ideal philosophy of life, and answered questions which had puzzled me for years. Christian Science ended my search of ancient and modern philosophies for a workable rule for the conduct of life, though it was some time before I could give up my human theories and accept fully Mrs. Eddy's teachings.
In the Manual of The Mother Church (p. 45) we read: "It shall be the duty of the members of The Mother Church and of its branches to promote peace on earth and good will toward men; . . . and they shall strive to promote the welfare of all mankind by demonstrating the rules of divine Love." It was, perhaps, an innate desire "to promote peace on earth and good will toward men" and "to promote the welfare of all mankind" which prompted me to take up pharmaceutic research. But at the point of my discovery (after a college training and several years' laboratory practice) of the fallacy of medical theories and their application to the treatment of disease, I was led to study Christian Science, and eventually to abandon the other line of work. "Demonstrating the rules of divine Love" was then the principal duty placed upon me before I learned to know that Mrs. Eddy gave this as a duty of church membership. It seemed at first a great and heavy burden, while I kicked "against the pricks" and was too dull to understand why I should be so reduced in the ranks of human society as to be virtually a servant to uneducated laboring men. But in many a seeming direful situation I was forced to strive to demonstrate "the rules of divine Love." Consequently, with many wonderful proofs of the power of Christian Science to convert and quell discordant conditions and establish love and harmony among groups of rough and evil-thinking men, this process no longer was a burden, but a joyful duty. To-day, though I am grateful for the protection and life-preserving power of Truth, I am most grateful that, when humbly and properly used, it enables me to assist in bringing "peace on earth and good will toward men." I now look upon the healing of disease and injury not so much as a means of according me physical comfort, but as one of the sure offices of divine Love, our Father-Mother, to make it possible for me to demonstrate "the rules of divine Love."
