The first thing I read relating to Christian Science was a book on the life of Mrs. Eddy. In it her life was examined from a wholly material point of view and presented with a defamatory skepticism. From the reading of this book, which had come into my hands quite by chance, I retained but one impression: a curiosity to read the extraordinary book called "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy. Very soon afterwards I met a relative, a Christian Scientist, who lent me our precious textbook. That was over two years ago.
At the time I was in a sorry state mentally and physically. I had come to see that merely human things, even though they seem most secure, and are most dear to us, may fall away from one day to the next. This had been my experience a few years before when I lost my husband; and with my great sorrow there remained a sense, which nothing obliterated, of the futility of mortal life. I was very unhappy; God seemed to me to be too far away to be able to fill this void.
But after reading the first pages of the book, Science and Health, I was quickly awakened from my mental torpor by this beautiful passage on page 9, "Dost thou 'love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind'?" I asked myself how it was possible to obey this commandment. I continued reading the book earnestly, and a month later when I reached the last chapter I was very much surprised to find that I no longer had any sense of sorrow. Not only had it completely disappeared, but it had been replaced by a great joy which has never left me, the joy of knowing that we can even now perceive the eternality of Life by realizing our unity with our one and only creator, divine Love, in whom we are all united.
