In December, 1918, I was discharged from the military service quite weak from a struggle with influenza. I went home to a small northern Idaho town, and my mother told me how she had been healed by Christian Science. I ridiculed the thought and asked to read the book she had on the subject, telling her I would point out the fallacies. She gave me Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy. I read a few pages and was very deeply impressed, especially with the thought that everything is possible to God. I told my mother I felt this to be true and that Christ Jesus had certainly demonstrated it.
All through my youth I had been troubled with rheumatism, and soon after my return home I experienced a severe attack of it with complications connected with my physical weakness. A doctor was called, and he told my mother I wouldn't live more than two hours.
The first sentence in Chapter I of Science and Health, "The prayer that reforms the sinner and heals the sick is an absolute faith that all things are possible to God,—a spiritual understanding of Him, an unselfed love," came very clearly to me, and I remembered Mrs. Eddy's positiveness in the next few pages I had read. I had always wanted God's omnipotence to be proved true to me. I couldn't see why it should not be true when Jesus said (Mark 10:27), "With God all things are possible," and (Mark 9:23), "If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth."
