For a great number of years I have enjoyed the help and protection of Christian Science as my only physician in sickness, and as my guide through many troubled phases of life. My first healing, that of asthma, came entirely as a result of reading and studying the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy. Since that time there has been a succession of healings of such ills as colds and influenza.
One night I found myself suffering from a severe attack of sickness which bordered on delirium. My fear was very great, especially when I remembered that I was all alone in the house and out of reach of any Christian Science help. I did my best as a beginner to declare and to realize the allness of God and the unreality of sickness and fear. The trouble did not abate, and the thought that I might lose consciousness increased my fear. It also made me make a more vigorous effort to help myself. Then came a flash of understanding, and I realized for the first time that the Bible and the Christian Science textbook both refer to God's perfect spiritual man and not to a frightened mortal concept of man; that the spiritual fact of being must always appear to be a lie to material sense, and vice versa. Immediately a wonderful feeling of security and peace came to me; the fever and delirium faded out, and the storm of fear was suddenly hushed to a calm. I fell asleep and awakened in the morning perfectly well.
My greatest gratitude to Christian Science is for the regenerating influence it has exerted over my character, and the slow but complete change which it has brought about in my professional life as an artist. At one time I was entirely absorbed by the usually accepted Bohemian attitude toward life, which was self-indulgent and very material. I gloried in my careless and impractical mode of living, and considered it to be the only suitable atmosphere for the production of art. Slowly, however, the understanding I gained through Christian Science of God as divine Principle created in me a distaste for this style of life and pleasure, and I began to try to free myself from it. In this I experienced a wonderful healing from the craving for tobacco, to which I had been subject, and which I believed to be indispensable to my so-called artistic temperament. No other experience of healing has meant so much to me as the liberation from this bondage. Following this came total abstinence from alcohol and an appreciation of Mrs. Eddy's statement in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 289) that "its slightest use is abuse."
