A THIRTY YEARS' SEARCH REWARDED

I will add my testimony for Christian Science. For thirty-five years I had so-called inherited muscular rheumatism, suffering at intervals all the tortures which that disease brings. I could get no relief through medicine, having tried many doctors and even read medical works, but only succeeded in imbibing some of the diseases therein described. I suffered with hemorrhoids for sixteen years, chills and fever for many years during the warm season, and colds and coughs every winter as far back as my memory reaches; and about six years ago I began to have spells of deafness which recurred at irregular intervals, until finally I became totally deaf in one ear and about half deaf in the other.

Such was my condition one year ago, when Christian Science was first presented to me,—or rather it was presented to another but he rejected it, and happily it came to me. I immediately began the investigation of this, to me, strange doctrine. I went to the evening experience meeting and was much impressed with all that I saw and heard there. I was completely healed or cured of the drink habit, or taste for intoxicating liquors, at this meeting, though there was not a word said on the subject. On my way home I met an acquaintance in front of a saloon who asked me to step inside, as there were more of the boys in there. He detained me quite a while, but I could not endure the idea of stepping out of what seemed to be heaven, right into what I knew to be hell. Nor have I ever had the least desire to taste strong drink since that night. I read Christian Science literature, and studied "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," every moment that I could spare, and attended the meetings whenever possible. My health began to improve from the beginning, and at the end of three months all my ailments had disappeared, deafness being the last to go. I feel impelled to state the manner of its disappearance, as it hung on for some time after the departure of all other claims.

My stumbling-block was the unreality of evil or personality of the devil. I believed the teachings of Christian Science in regard to it, but it was a kind of blind faith, the "help-thou-mine-unbelief" faith. I did not have the understanding. I had struggled with the problem time after time, but was unable to demonstrate the truth. But success came at last. I awoke near the hour of midnight, and here is the demonstration: God is all-in-all, what or who is the devil? The devil is the ape of God; whatever God does, the devil apes or pretends to do. God created the good. God is Spirit, Spirit is Mind, Mind is the ever-present, the Creator. Now what is the ape of Mind? why, the human or mortal mind, and there was my devil—mortal mind.