There was the lawyer who came into a Reading Room in the midwestern United States to ask help in finding Bible passages he intended to use in a murder trial. And the three young Asian men who stopped there to inquire about a certain Bible verse and stayed to study awhile, bowing graciously at their departure.
In Johannesburg, South Africa, a young woman in a financial crisis came into a Reading Room. She owned a small business nearby, and it was not doing well. The librarian showed her around; and when they came to the study room, the young woman asked what people came there for. To read, to study, and to pray—sometimes to work out their problems—she was told.
Immediately the newcomer wanted to know if discouragement was one of those problems that could be worked out. The librarian replied that it could, with Christian Science. Since the non-Scientist did not seem ready to read Science and Health, the librarian told her of the healing promises in the twenty-third Psalm. Following that day the woman returned several times, but with the discouraging report that the business wouldn't sell, that there didn't seem to be a market for it. The librarian continued to give her encouragement. And before long the woman dropped around with better news. She had sold the business. She thanked the librarian for her help and confided that when things seemed bad she had turned innumerable times to the verse the librarian had first shown her, "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want."
