Several times I have tried to account for the genuine interest which I felt upon hearing from a new acquaintance something about the teachings of Christian Science for the first time. It was not merely his assertion that Christian Science could heal all manner of sickness and sin that enlisted my favor from the very beginning. It had always been a deep disappointment to me that life was apparently shrouded in mystery, and that God was keeping us in ignorance of the nature and plan of true existence. I had read a little in the Old Testament, but practically nothing in the New Testament; and I was one of those who "through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage." Although in moments of extremity I had appealed to God, I could see no reason to hope for any other end but extinction after death. To such a fate I could not reconcile myself; and the result was a morbid, depressed nature, unable to find peace in the present for fear of the future.
It was therefore the comforting truth voiced, and supported by illustration and logic, that material existence is but a seeming and not a real existence, that I welcomed so gladly as the first faint ray of hope. So I joyfully read the authorized Christian Science literature that was given to me, and later purchased a copy of the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy. From the start of my study there was something of a positive note in this volume, which I had found in no other book, and which not only made its statements ring true, but which assured me that the author knew them to be true. Perhaps this assurance is explained in the sentence (Science and Health, p. 368), "The confidence inspired by Science lies in the fact that Truth is real and error is unreal."
Less than a year after my introduction to Christian Science, I experienced a healing of diphtheria through the help of a Christian Science practitioner. This was the first demonstration which I had of the unreliability of sense-testimony. It was with much hesitation that I called for a practitioner to visit me, but fear was largely dispelled by his comforting explanations of Truth. Absent treatment followed, and the next morning I was able to read from Science and Health. Reared as I had been in a family where since childhood medicine had been deemed natural and necessary for the sick, the disappearance, one after another, of an array of formidable symptoms in less than forty-eight hours, without a physical remedy of any kind, was a complete reversal of what I had previously believed. For a long time this experience stood before me as a land mark in the journey out of darkness. It pointed for me the promise that if sense-testimony could be so completely refuted in one instance, then it eventually would be nullified in its entirety, and discord of every kind would be proved but a dream.
