More than twenty-seven years ago, after weary weeks in a hospital following an operation, I was carried home in a much worse condition than before the operation. The first time I was out I ruptured my side, and for months suffered night and day.
Some time before this a schoolmate of my husband's had taken up the study of Christian Science and had tried to get my husband to study and try it for me, but we had no faith and would not listen. One day my husband became tired of hearing his friend preach about this Science and he said: "I'll tell you what I'll do; if you will never mention Christian Science to me again, and if you will get a practitioner to take my wife without remuneration, as I will not pay five cents for Christian Science treatment, I will get her to try it for six months. Maybe by that time I can save money to send her to the hospital for another operation." His friend said, "You will pay if she is healed, will you not?" He said, "Oh, yes, I am safe in saying that."
He came home and told me, and one of my old besetting sins, violent temper, was roused and I declared that I would not be seen going to a Christian Science practitioner; but he finally induced me to go. I could not walk alone, so was helped to the home of a practitioner. I had been a student of the Bible from childhood but had turned away from it after hearing my father preach at a funeral that God in His wisdom had taken a mother from her children. When this practitioner explained the Bible to me in the light of Christian Science, it was indeed as though scales fell from my eyes, and I walked away healed. As I walked through the park my feet did not seem to touch the earth; the grass was greener, the flowers were fairer, and the birds sang a new song. I ran up the steps, and my little daughter who saw me called to my sons that I was coming. I shall never forget the joy in her voice, for she could see that I was "transformed by the renewing of [my] mind," as Paul says in Romans.
