Article August 18, 1917 Issue

Liberation

LIDA S. STONE

A very helpful article in one of our periodicals struck a chord of feeling, bringing sweet (one definition of sweet is melodious) renewal of my own experience when our Leader gave us the mid-week testimony meetings. As far back as I can remember I was conscious of an extreme condition of timidity, a painful reluctance to advance without looking to another to supply the initiative. Brought up in a religious belief which observed its collected prayers, rites, and ceremonials with awe and regarded a departure from them as an impossibility, I myself became less and less able to act with the freedom which I admired in others.

In the years of faithful adherence to this chilling belief I was always ill, with no hope beyond the fears and sufferings of an invalid, until Christian Science shone upon my weary self and chased the shadows away. My emergence from continual haunting fear into confidence, courage, and strength was the natural result of my changed concept of God, and it led me naturally out of the old church with no feeling but that of peace and joy,—joy that at last I had a God who would answer all the puzzling questions which my "spiritual advisers," earnest and sincere as they were, always dismissed by saying, "That is a mystery you cannot know now."

In the invalid period to which I refer there was an exaggerated fear of people, so it need hardly be said that I could not have addressed a number of people, much less could I have given an experience such as is heard in our Wednesday evening meetings. Besides this, my ritualistic education admitted of no such "irregular" proceeding. The many blessings which the healing Christ was daily bringing to me filled my thought with songs of gratitude and a desire to follow obediently in the way our beloved Leader indicated. One of the early opportunities to prove my sincerity came when our Leader gave to the field the testimony meetings with this inspired and inspiring message: "Make broader your bounds for blessing the people. ... Learn to forget what you should not remember, viz., self, and live for the good you do. Be meek; let your mottoes for these meetings be, Who shall be least, and servant; and 'Little children, love one another'" (Journal, Vol. XIII, p. 41).

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