As a child I regularly attended the Sunday Schools of two different Protestant denominations at different periods, and when about twelve years old, I was confirmed in one of them. I did not learn anything that I can recall about God or prayer. I gave up attending church, and when I married and had children, I decided that I should send the children to Sunday School because they had the right to make up their own minds on the question of religion, even though, by this time, I just could not understand why people went to church.
Then, about fourteen years ago, while I was lying in bed one evening, a most wonderful feeling came over me, a knowledge that God is real. It was a most beautiful feeling around my heart. As John Wesley has written, "I felt my heart strangely warmed." I started to pray for the first time in my life,—simply talking to God and asking Him to help and then thanking Him when the help was received. It was wonderful.
Finding no help in my own church in trying to understand the Bible and learn more of God, I started looking to other religions. In the public library I soon came across Lyman P. Powell's biography, Mary Baker Eddy: A Life Size Portrait. This book told of a wonderful religion, Christian Science, and I knew this was what I wanted. I borrowed the textbook, Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy, from the library and started to read that too. Then a tennis friend mentioned that her daughter attended Sunday School. What she said of it sounded like the religion I had read about, and it was.
