About twenty-one years ago, after several years of intense suffering caused by stomach trouble, I purchased a copy of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy. Several years before, a friend had given my father a copy of one of the early editions, but it had never been studied or considered of practical value in solving the problems in our home. When I was finally convinced that medicines were no longer helping me, I turned wholeheartedly to the study of this textbook. After a few months of diligent study, I was healed. Many times during those weeks fear and resistance would tempt me to lay aside the book, and many times I would pray and ask God to give me a sign that I might know whether or not Science and Health contained His true message to mankind. One day my answer came, almost as if a voice were speaking to me. It was the clear realization borne into my consciousness that Science and Health recorded the revealed truth about God and His creation, and was the "key" which unlocked the hidden treasures of the Bible. I no longer feared to read the book, and in a short time was entirely healed of the physical difficulty. I was able to eat what I desired without suffering; I gained in weight, slept peacefully at night, and was lifted into a calm and exalted spiritual condition.
During the world war, when word came to us that a younger brother had given his life on the battlefields of France, and an overwhelming sense of loss and resentment surged into my heart, Christian Science proved itself again a friend in need, and through the loving help of a practitioner, constant reading of the Lesson-Sermons and the authorized literature, and attendance at the church services, the bitterness was gradually replaced with forgiveness and the thought of death was replaced with the conviction that, because my brother's life was an individual expression of God, who is Life, his life could not be lost or destroyed. Our Leader's words on page 358 of Science and Health, "Can a leaden bullet deprive a man of Life, —that is, of God, who is man's Life?" and, "Universal Love is the divine way in Christian Science" (p. 266), were the two mighty statements to which I clung during those trying days.
In these years during which I have been striving to learn about God and His goodness through the channels provided by our Leader I have had many perplexing problems, and likewise many satisfying proofs of God's tender love and guidance. I have had many physical healings; healings of malarial fever, influenza, and tonsillitis. Colds have been very quickly healed, sometimes by my own work, many times with the aid of a practitioner.
