Desire is prayer, and God answers our prayers in due...

Desire is prayer, and God answers our prayers in due season, even though we may think there is no more help available for us. Gratefully I think of the way I was led to the truth, at a time when all things combined to make me feel that, particularly due to my physical condition and its attendant despondency, I would always be deprived of most of the activities of life which I saw others enjoying. I had gradually assumed a negative attitude toward most things in life, which was in no small way due to reading many so-called scientific works whose aim it was to reduce everything to matter and the workings of matter, and thus to finity. I felt that life that had an ending was meaningless, and still to believe in a hereafter was beyond my materialistic vision. The sudden healing of a friend of mine through Christian Science caused me to investigate its teaching, and as a result of the loving assistance given me by a Christian Scientist I soon had treatment for my physical troubles. Within three weeks I could discard a linen stocking which I had been wearing on account of varicose veins. Shortly thereafter I discovered that I had been healed, I did not know when, of a weak heart, that had always been a hindrance and a source of anxiety to me. An almost chronic bowel disorder and other ailments have also been overcome.

After a preliminary stage of high enthusiasm I gradually began to realize that real hard work would have to be done to change my whole mode of wrong thinking. My worst enemies were antagonism, impatience, and despondency when progress seemed to have come to a standstill, and I felt more at sea than formerly when I had had my so-called will power to support me. I owe a great deal to a practitioner who manifested infinite patience and much love at the time. Real gratitude is something that words can never express. Christian Science enabled me to travel from one place to another whenever this seemed desirable, although I was living in a country where I was at the time considered an enemy alien. I was also always able to find proper means of making a living, and once when I had been imprisoned, having been caught in a trap meant for somebody else, the gates were again opened for me within three days instead of my staying at least a month, which had been predicted for me by other prison inmates on account of the then existing conditions and other details involved. Right in this prison I found a message for me, for a copy of the Christian Science Sentinel had been left there by a distribution committee. Christian Science is slowly but surely regenerating me in many ways, and I am now trying to work out everything from the standpoint of metaphysics.

On page 149 of "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" Mrs. Eddy writes: "Remember, thou canst be brought into no condition, be it ever so severe, where Love has not been before thee and where its tender lesson is not awaiting thee." I wanted to write a testimony when my ship was safely riding at anchor in the haven of rest, but as progress is infinite, is there not always more than enough to be thankful for right now? In order to realize this, I need only take a short glance backward to the time when I was without a knowledge of the redeeming spirit of the Christ,—as a man without God and without hope in the world. My hope is now sustained by what I know the present holds for me as for everybody else if we are willing to yield to the demands of Principle; not glorious future possibilities but the certainty now of the glory of the son of God.—H. H. Siemers, Hamburg, Germany.