For some time past I have felt so really full of gratitude for the Truth revealed to us through Science and Health, that fear has entirely given place to a joyful sense of freedom, sufficient at least to enable me to express something of my gratitude and tell something of our experience, that may be helpful to others. My husband and I had been brought up in the Episcopal Church, with a strong religious sense of faith in God and belief in His existence. But years of sickness, doubt, and fear, and of seemingly ineffectual prayer had gradually so discouraged us that we had almost lost faith in a being who never seemed to hear us, and of whose existence we had no visible proof.
When Science and Health came into our home, between thirteen and fourteen years ago, in the West, we often laid it aside with the words, "This is strange doctrine. It upsets everything we ever were taught to believe. Perhaps it is the work of the devil to tempt us away from the faith of our forefathers;" but something always impelled us to take it up again and again. I remember one day after we had had it some weeks, I sat in doubt and darkness, needing help very much, and I opened that wonderful book near the beginning, and the feeling came over me that I did not want to read there, that I would turn the leaves till I found something particularly adapted to my need, when the thought came to me with great clearness, If this is Truth, every word of it is a help, and I read right where I first opened, and never shall I forget the help and uplifting that came. I knew it to be the Truth, and I got a glimpse for the first time how to pray aright.
The Bible, which of late years we had read only from a sense of duty and habit, became a new book to us, and daily grows clearer to our awakened thought. After all these years of struggling out of false theology and materiality, we rejoice exceedingly, for we know that we are gradually coming into a realization of "the glorious liberty of the sons of God." It was over a year before my husband felt he was healed, for we were so buried in materiality, materia medica, and false theology, that the good news contained in the Bible, revealed through "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," seemed too good to be true. Science and Health says, "If sin, sickness, and death were understood as nothingness, they would disappear. As vapor which melts before the sun, evil would vanish before the reality of Good" (p. 480, Rev. Ed.). And so we found it, for as our thought changed, and fear gave place to trust, and a blind belief in God faded before an understanding of Him, sickness and suffering began to disappear. Sometimes, looking back, I think, when the glorious Truth could reach us, so sunk in materiality and wedded to so many false gods, it can reach any one, and I long to be able to tell the dear ones who may be discouraged over their slow healing, hold right on, for surely the light will come and you will be healed. We are the children of the living God, now, and Christian Science shows us how to demonstrate this fact, but the spiritualization of our thought, which alone enables us to realize it, does not come at once, but is a patient, persistent, daily striving to overcome everything unlike God, our Father.
Sometimes we are tempted to think if we just go along comfortably, declaring God's allness as best we can, that that is enough. But this is not so, and I have had a good many lessons along that line in my common, every-day work. I found it for a long time quite difficult to cook, and many a time I have said, almost with tears of longing, "Oh, if I only knew what is wrong, where the mistake is, so I could correct it and not repeat it," knowing that was the only way to get perfect results. And so it is with our work in Science. We cannot ignore error, for it exists as a false claim, and this false claim must be detected and overcome in order to prove God's allness. We dishonor Him by giving power to evil, and this is unavoidable unless we see and overcome the claims of evil.
Never once has Truth failed us in all these years, and we know it never will. If at times there has been seeming failure, we know for a certainty that it has been either ignorance of the error to be overcome, unwillingness to overcome it, or a lack of understanding and realization of the omnipotence of God. Christian Science is the only way we can be saved from the false claims of the carnal mind, manifest in sin, sickness, and death. For this great revelation given to this, and all ages to come, we thank our God, and our beloved Leader and Teacher, Rev. Mary Baker Eddy, whose wonderful life of love, courage, and self-sacrifice, has made its demonstration possible.
Boston, Mass.
