Out of gratitude for the good I am experiencing I should...

Out of gratitude for the good I am experiencing I should like to tell how I was divinely led to Christian Science, because I regard the experience as a beautiful proof of the Bible statement, "Ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart."

My early recollections are of a happy home in Norway. But soon this happiness faded away, for my father passed on at thirty-five and within a year and a half a fourteen-year-old brother and two little sisters also left us. Soon after this, when I was nine years old, my mother came to America with her remaining children, and bravely tried to carry on. I was receiving careful religious training in a Protestant church, but the more I prayed for absolute certainty about God the more vague and uncertain my religious concepts seemed to become.

One day, while searching the Bible for light and assurance, I turned to the twenty-second chapter of Revelation, and as I read the first five verses such a wonderful assurance of the reality of God and the spiritual world came to me that my years of doubting were instantly swept away. But suddenly, while I was still seated with my Bible, the terrible belief took possession of me that I was lost and should be separated from God forever. Several kind ministers tried in vain to disillusion me, and when their efforts failed they recommended medical attention. I was taken to a distant city, where a noted physician diagnosed my condition as one of "extreme melancholy." At length, many months after everyone had given up trying to help me and had ceased talking about religion to me, light dawned in my consciousness. Within a week after my release from the belief of everlasting separation from God, I was led to Christian Science. I knew no one who was interested in this Science, but because I was convinced that God was directing me to inquire about it, I did so, going to a Christian Science Reading Room, where the textbook was lovingly lent me.

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Poem
Consecration
April 21, 1934
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