Seven years ago I left a well-known medical clinic, after seeking help, to return home to die. My sister, who accompanied me, was told that nothing could be done for me, that I could not live six months. The doctors said that I had serious heart trouble and emphysema. One lung had collapsed and the other would collapse at any moment. The doctors were most considerate and kind. They notified my home doctor to continue the same prescription designed to kill the pain; the prescription to be doubled, then tripled.
A new friend, a Christian Scientist, urged me to buy a copy of Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy. I arranged to have a copy at once. The first sentence to catch and hold my attention was this (p. 273): "Matter and its claims of sin, sickness, and death are contrary to God, and cannot emanate from Him." If sickness was not of God, I wanted nothing to do with it. Immediately I wanted to push sickness away, out of my life. But how? I read on eagerly.
I read Christ Jesus' words in the Bible (John 8:32), "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." From the moment I read that sickness was not of God, gratitude to a kind, loving God had begun to flood my heart. With Mrs. Eddy's correlative passages in Science and Health illuminating the Scriptures, I read with a gradually increasing understanding that the truth was the knowledge of perfect God and perfect man, made in His likeness. Still, with only a little understanding, I tried to see myself as God's child, reflecting perfect health and goodness.
