The past few years have given me cause to think often of Peter's words when, in writing to the early Christians, he referred to God as the one "who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light" (I Pet. 2:9). I was indeed in darkness on a day about six years ago when I stopped in front of a store window, my attention drawn to a placard announcing a Christian Science lecture. I was earning a heavy burden of self-pity and self-condemnation, and could find no reason for living, although I had searched for the truth for years in the church I had attended from infancy, and later in the paths of intellectualism. That evening I attended the lecture and took my first step out of the darkness of material beliefs.
Although I began the study of Christian Science with no thought of physical healing, it was not long before I had a proof of Mrs. Eddy's statement, "Christian Science brings to the body the sunlight of Truth, which invigorates and purifies" (Science and Health, p. 162). Physical difficulties of long standing disappeared. Anemia, which had made my life one endless round of weariness, was healed. When I began to understand that God is All-in-all and that "there is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter," as "the scientific statement of being" begins (ibid., p. 468), I threw away a doctor's prescription on which I had long depended. I was freed also from the enslaving habit of drinking coffee and found myself possessed of greater strength and energy than I had ever known before. Chronic constipation and hemorrhoids, for which a specialist had promised only temporary relief through surgery, were permanently healed in the first months of my study, although these conditions were never mentioned to the practitioner who was helping me at that time and who guided my early steps in Science. One of our sons, who had been under a doctor's care for anemia and who was thought to be a frail child, was so strengthened through Christian Science that friends noticed and commented upon his evident good health.
Our youngest son was healed of a recurrent painful condition of the ear, which was never diagnosed but which his teacher and the school nurse said had impaired his hearing. Eater another of the children was suddenly stricken with a very serious illness. No medical diagnosis was sought, but the nature of the symptoms, together with the prevalence of the disease at the time, rated that the condition was polio. With the faithful and wise help of the practitioner fear was overcome, and the child's recovery was quick and complete.
