A few months before I began to study Christian Science, dismayed at the conclusions I had reached after years of human reasoning on material existence and practically without hope, I left Chicago, which was then my home, with no destination in view. I carried very little visible baggage, but I did carry a great invisible burden. This burden consisted of sin of many kinds, including lust, hate, hypocrisy; disease, including frequent and severe heart pains, eye trouble, which caused me to wear glasses, chronic bronchial cough, chronic sinusitis, and constipation; unbelief, to the extent of denying good, as being without proof; despair, which was fast causing me to lost my last rays of light. I returned to Chicago and existed until the spring of the following year, when without any particular volition on my part I was led to go to a Christian Science practitioner.
That was over four years ago. Since then there has been a mighty struggle, but I am happy to say that through Christian Science, with plenty of help from loyal practitioners, with much steadfast and persistent spiritual work and study on my own part, I have been healed to a very great degree. The cough and the heart pains have completely vanished. After my first visit to the practitioner I never again needed to wear glasses. I have also been healed of influenza, of what seemed to be a severe attack of appendicitis, and of other miscellaneous aches and ills, and have had definite protection in and from accidents. Also, the belief of pleasure in smoking has been destroyed.
I am grateful for the experiences which led me to Christian Science, and for the sufferings which forced me to continue to trust "Truth, the strong deliverer, to guide me into the land of Christian Science, where fetters fall and the rights of man are fully known and acknowledged" (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy, pp. 226, 227). I am grateful for a growing sense of love, gratitude, purity, health, and happiness, and for membership in The Mother Church and in a branch church. Above all, I rejoice that through the study, acceptance, and application of Christian Science, as revealed to the world through Mrs. Eddy, I am gaining a clearer understanding that, as our Leader says (ibid., p. 266), "Man is deathless, spiritual. He is above sin or frailty. He does not cross the barriers of time into the vast forever of Life, but he coexists with God and the universe."— Chicago, Illinois.
