I have enjoyed the benefits of Christian Science since a small child, and wish to express my appreciation for all the help received. I have experienced the healing of grief, unemployment, influenza, sprained ankle, fallen arches, tonsillitis, eyestrain, colds, and other discordant conditions. In many cases the healings have been instantaneous. In attempting to express my gratitude, I find that I have traveled very far from the background of tragedy, the dark dream of hopeless debt, the lack of opportunity, and mesmeric human sympathy, the mortal beliefs upon which my mother turned the searchlight of Truth. I have been guided and protected all along a road that has been filled with happy experiences and opportunities for progress. I am also very grateful for the lessons along the way that have brought me into closer communion with God.
Our revered Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, writes in our textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 308), "Jacob was alone, wrestling with error,—struggling with a mortal sense of life, substance, and intelligence as existent in matter with its false pleasures and pains,—when an angel, a message from Truth and Love, appeared to him and smote the sinew, or strength, of his error, till he saw its unreality." At different times the error with me has been a trying disposition, a sense of lack, the loss of a loved one, or the thought that some phase of error had assailed me again, or that I had lost something which I felt belonged to me. Then, alone with the turmoil of error clamoring for recognition, before the words for help have been uttered, the angel of divine inspiration has appeared, as to Jacob, and I have received spiritual strength. Sometimes it has been a single line from the Bible or a fragment of a hymn that has comforted me, and I have experienced the peace that follows the routing of bitterness and despair. Like Jacob, I am learning not to let the angel depart, after I have found peace, until I have destroyed the error within my own consciousness.
I have found that I can lose only error, never good, because God, good, is permanent, enduring; also, that inharmonious conditions are generally the result of the desire for possessions for one's self, ease for one's self, pride in one's self, a false estimate of one's brother-man, or the belief that human will can guide one's footsteps. When these errors have been uncovered and destroyed, the inharmonious conditions attendant upon them have disappeared.
