Up to within eight days of my thirty-third birthday, I had never entered a church with serious intent. At that time my church experience was limited to my own christening, several funerals, and a wedding. I remained away from church because I could not believe that one intelligent God would have so many widely differing creeds, through the study of which one might enter heaven. At the age of seventeen, I once startled a Sunday school class, where, as a first-time visitor with friends, I answered "No" to the teacher's question, "Aren't you glad you know God?" In my childhood my people possessed a massive heavily-hinged Bible, but to my knowledge not one member of our family ever read it.
With that as my background, and without invitation or solicitation from anyone, I attended a Christian Science Sunday service in the fall of 1919. My interest and enthusiasm were immediately aroused, and I began at once to make adjustments that would permit my regular attendance. I bought Mrs. Eddy's books and subscribed to the literature. In the past twenty years I have missed church services only when it was physically impossible to be present.
Today "I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness." Nor do I limit myself in this ambition to the literal interpretation of that statement. As an usher in a Christian Science church, I am "a doorkeeper in the house of my God." But I strive daily to remember that the real "Church," as defined by Mrs. Eddy (Science and Health, p. 583), is "the structure of Truth and Love; whatever rests upon and proceeds from divine Principle."
