Christian Science came into our lives many years ago shortly after my husband and I emigrated from our native Germany to the United States. A neighbor one day asked me where our small son attended Sunday School. I told her I had visited several churches here but that I didn't feel satisfied. She invited me to take our son to her church, a branch Church of Christ, Scientist, in New York City. The boy loved that Christian Science Sunday School at once, and I began to attend the services there. I felt satisfied for us both and knew that I had found Truth. My husband at first resented our going. Then one day a kind church member said to him, "John, why don't you come, too, one Sunday morning, so you can see for yourself what is making your wife and your son so happy?" My husband was glad to be invited, and he came with us the next Sunday. He attended regularly every service for the rest of his life and eventually became a member of The Mother Church.
One Wednesday evening I left my home in a suburb to attend the testimony meeting at my branch church in Manhattan. As I waited for the train, another woman sat near me on the platform bench. When the train came we both got up and moved toward the door. She seemed to press very close to me, which puzzled me since we were the only two passengers getting on. When the doors closed, however, I could not see her in the car, and when I got to my station I realized that my pocketbook was missing. I immediately prayed, acknowledging the integrity of man, but rode on to the next station while I decided what to do. Then I knew I must go back to where I had taken the train. On the return trip I repeated the Lord's Prayer and "the scientific statement of being" from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy.
I found comforting reassurance in Mrs. Eddy's words from Rudimental Divine Science (p. 10), "You must feel and know that God alone governs man; that His government is harmonious; that He is too pure to behold iniquity, and divides His power with nothing evil or material; ..." I remembered the line from Hymn No. 134 in the Christian Science Hymnal that goes, "I look to Thee in every need," and knew that God would reward that looking to Him. I prayed in this fashion until I was able to recognize the real nature of the woman as a perfect spiritual idea without one trace of evil or misguided motive or action.
