Between 1917 and 1930 I had accumulated a small fortune, and with it I had acquired many undesirable habits, such as heavy drinking and smoking, also a tendency to be domineering.
Then the stock market broke, and I lost all my material wealth. Two weeks later my wife and I came home from shopping one day and found that our eight-year-old boy had been killed by a truck. Upon hearing this I felt there was no use carrying on. I became very ill, and although I went to many doctors and took much medicine, very little could be done for me, and I went South, expecting to die.
I had been brought up to believe that God loves, hates, and punishes, and did so until I met a friend who was a student of Christian Science. He invited me to go to his office; and while I was there, he asked me if I would care to try Christian Science. He went with me to the office of a Christian Science practitioner. The practitioner was kind and loving in talking with me and asked if I believed in God. I said that I did. He then told me that God is our Father-Mother. He explained that even as my human father and mother loved me and would not want me to be sick, so our Father-Mother God in His great love cares for His children and would not have them suffer. This brought a ray of new light. I thought, How wonderful to have a Father-Mother God who loves and does not punish. This truth was my first glimpse of Christian Science teaching, and ever since that time God has been my only physician.
