One Fourth of July, several years age, I went with friends...

One Fourth of July, several years age, I went with friends to spend the day at Terminal Island, and took along a Sentinel with my lunch. The morning was very warm and we were rejoicing in the prospect of the delightful sea breeze. The usual crowds filled the cars and we had a merry "run" to the beach, but our disappointment was great to find the expected wind missing, and by noon the air seemed intolerably warm. Several persons had fainted and many seemed almost overcome by the intense heat. At last, when I discovered myself to be in a fainting condition, I remembered my Sentinel, and getting it and settling myself against a tree, I was soon absorbed in its pages and utterly oblivious to my surroundings. When I looked up from its last page I heard a voice exclaim, "A breeze has sprung up," and I received its cool breath as a benediction. I had been reading about an hour, and while the others had passed through a most uncomfortable time, I, sitting near them, knew nothing of it. My thought had not been absorbed in materiality, but was in touch with the brave thinkers who live so near Truth that we may well heed their messages. The thought came to me of our beloved Leader, whose mental purity enabled her to discern the light of Truth and who with ceaseless vigilance, turning neither to right nor left, guided, warned, and protected us until we became spiritual enough to see it also.

When this light first reached my darkened consciousness I was a physical wreck. A dear Scientist, recognizing my need of help, urged me one day to go with her a few blocks from my house to see a practitioner. Most reluctantly I consented, as I did not believe that "words" could reach my illnesses of twenty years' standing. Tenderly this friend led me over the rough road, for there were times when walking seemed torture, and when I sank into a chair in the practitioner's home I really longed to die then and there, my body was so full of pain and I was so tired of suffering. But at the first words of the practitioner I sat upright with wide-opened eyes. What was she saying? And as she talked on in what to me seemed an utterly foreign language, her face shone with such light and love that I felt myself in a holy place and bowed my head in deepest wonder and awe. Oh, the rapture of the hope given me so freely that bright afternoon! And yet she was talking of God, to whom I had always turned instinctively, but without seeming response, when my burdens seemed more than I could bear. Presently the practitioner placed in my hands a copy of Science and Health, bidding me read where she indicated, then closed her eyes and remained quiet. And I? I drank in greedily the wonderful words which were to teach me how to reach the heart of prayer. The spiritual interpretation of our Lord's Prayer, so beautiful and comforting, was in itself a healing draft, and when I arose from that chair I was lifted to the mountain-tops,—I was a new creature. The practitioner loaned me a copy of the book and asked me to come to her the next day. I would have flown home, but my friend laughingly reminded me that she could not fly. Her joy was unbounded to have been the means of helping me to reach such a transformation, to have been permitted to lead to the living fount one who needed its healing waters so badly. I wanted the whole world to know what had happened, confident that to know the truth would be to accept it; but I met opposition and ridicule even in my own family. I however undauntedly pressed on in the new road, watching the lightshine through our wonderful text-book, though at times I was ready to despair of changing the thought around me; but help was given by practitioner and friend, and soon sweetest peace and content were mine.

The whole of the physical manifestation was long in yielding, though I was being regenerated and many wonderful proofs of Love's ever-presence came in response to my eager, earnest study of a religion which not only brought a happiness I had never before known, but returning health and vigor, filling my days with purest joy, that of helping others to find the light that never faileth. There is a song of deepest gratitude and love in my heart for our beloved Leader, and I will strive to let the light irradiate my consciousness, that the seeming gloom may be forever dispelled. Joyfully and gratefully am I striving daily to clear thought of all that is not of good, and am gaining every hour sweet assurance of ever-present Love in many beautiful demonstrations. I love the truth and am striving to be a channel for Love and Truth only. I could write a volume, my thought traveling faster than pen, but will only add that my love and gratitude are breathed daily for the faithful, tireless workers at headquarters, and all the writers who are helping us onward by their example and counsels.