I am deeply thankful that Christian Science, with all its infinitely rich blessings, entered my life. Illness led me to take it up. After trying all available material means and finding them ineffective, I at last turned to Christian Science, to which I ought to have turned at once, for I had heard it spoken of.
Several years ago I had an attack of a very troublesome throat complaint. As a child I had suffered from this, but now it started again in a severe form, so that I could not manage to speak longer than, at the utmost, ten minutes, though it was incumbent on me to teach from five to six hours daily. I consulted a throat specialist, whose diagnosis was that I suffered from very serious weakness of the voice. The only remedy would be to change the voice register. I went every day to this doctor for treatment and lessons in elocution. The days turned into months, and the months into years, without my perceiving any change for the better. It was hard work, with practice in elocution and daily lessons from the doctor. When I had been to this doctor for a year and a half, circumstances forced me to turn to a different throat specialist, with new methods of changing the voice register. After a leave of absence of two years and a half, I started my work again. By exerting, as it seemed to me, all my strength, I managed to do the work for six weeks, when inflammation of the ears confined me to my bed. When I had, to a certain extent, recovered from a serious operation, my tonsils were removed and my vocal chords, which were quite swollen, were cauterized by electricity. When I now tried to speak I was very hoarse.
My sister, who was in America, and who had previously written to me about Christian Science, now asked me again to turn to a Christian Science practitioner. This time I followed her advice and visited a practitioner. She took loving care of me, and with great patience and goodness showed me the way out of the difficulties, enabling me to understand a little of the infinite truth of Christian Science. Then I also began to grasp, to a certain extent, the meaning of the words which we read in the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy (p. 488), "If it were possible for the real senses of man to be injured, Soul could reproduce them in all their perfection; but they cannot be disturbed nor destroyed, since they exist in immortal Mind, not in matter;" and (p. 486): "Sight, hearing, all the spiritual senses of man, are eternal. They cannot be lost. Their reality and immortality are in Spirit and understanding, not in matter,—hence their permanence." At the same time that I sought Christian Science I started my work again with a big and trying class, after three and a half years' leave of absence. This is the sixth year that I have been on duty since being cured of the throat disease.
