I became interested in Christian Science as I observed my seven-year-old daughter, a pupil in the Christian Science Sunday School, daily apply her understanding in her experiences. I realized that she had something that I lacked, and that she spoke a different language. I resolved to seek and to find, and I am grateful to God each day that this quest was not in vain. I found health, harmony, and holiness or wholeness. I was very earnest and sincere, and was encouraged by the statement of our beloved Leader, Mrs. Eddy, in her Message to The Mother Church for 1900 (p. 9): "Sincerity is more successful than genius or talent." I attended church services, read the Lesson-Sermon from the Christian Science Quarterly each day, went to all available Christian Science lectures, and did not allow weather, transportation difficulties, or counterattractions to interfere. I read the periodicals systematically, spent much time in the Christian Science Reading Room, and frequently visited a practitioner, to whom I am deeply grateful for showing me, at that time, the necessity for obedience and honesty. I soon realized that I was engaged in God's business, and His only demand upon me was that I should express Him in all that I thought, spoke, and did.
This seemed a large order at that time, for I was living a very worldly life. I criticized and condemned myself and others, and knew little of real friendship. Gradually, with the sincere desire to be and to do better, I was able to see God, and God's man, as perfect, upright, and free. Little by little, false appetites dropped away. Each day was as a new birth. The Bible says, "Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again." I was healed of the desire for alcohol, coffee, tea, and tobacco. In Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy we read (p. 406), "The depraved appetite for alcoholic drinks, tobacco, tea, coffee, opium, is destroyed only by Mind's mastery of the body." I ceased to indulge in any games of chance. Many acquaintances who I had once felt were necessary to my happiness, no longer sought me, and I was too occupied learning about God to miss them.
Soon the results of right, sincere, and loving thinking became manifest in a better sense of health. As I gained a clearer realization that true body is spiritual—the embodiment of right ideas—I was freed from a belief of a hereditary disease of weak lungs. My whole appearance changed. Daily tasks became joyous instead of laborious; gone were the belief and burden of weariness and discouragement. As I trusted God more each day, I experienced greater freedom in all activities, and mere human outlining of plans became unnecessary. I was healed of a very painful and unsightly skin condition on my hands, when I clearly realized that resentment is a phase of hatred, and that all our needs are met as we love more.
