If these notes and comments, which have never been read by any one but myself, were published, it would show that after my discovery of the absolute Science of Mind-healing, like all great truths, this spiritual Science developed itself to me until Science and Health was written.  These early comments are valuable to me as waymarks of progress, which I would not have effaced.

Up to that time I had not fully voiced my discovery.  Naturally, my first jottings were but efforts to express in feeble diction Truth’s ultimate.  In Longfellow’s language,—­

    But the feeble hands and helpless,
    Groping blindly in the darkness,
    Touch God’s right hand in that darkness,
    And are lifted up and strengthened.

As sweet music ripples in one’s first thoughts of it like the brooklet in its meandering midst pebbles and rocks, before the mind can duly express it to the ear,—­so the harmony of divine Science first broke upon my sense, before gathering experience and confidence to articulate it.  Its natural manifestation is beautiful and euphonious, but its written expression increases in power and perfection under the guidance of the great Master.

The divine hand led me into a new world of light and Life, a fresh universe—­old to God, but new to His “little one.”  It became evident that the divine Mind alone must answer, and be found as the Life, or Principle, of all being; and that one must acquaint himself with God, if he would be at peace.  He must be ours practically, guiding our every thought and action; else we cannot understand the omnipresence of good sufficiently to demonstrate, even in part, the Science of the perfect Mind and divine healing.

I had learned that thought must be spiritualized, in order to apprehend Spirit.  It must become honest, unselfish, and pure, in order to have the least understanding of God in divine Science.  The first must become last.  Our reliance upon material things must be transferred to a perception of and dependence on spiritual things.  For Spirit to be supreme in demonstration, it must be supreme in our affections, and we must be clad with divine power.  Purity, self-renunciation, faith, and understanding must reduce all things real to their own mental denomination, Mind, which divides, subdivides, increases, diminishes, constitutes, and sustains, according to the law of God.

I had learned that Mind reconstructed the body, and that nothing else could.  How it was done, the spiritual Science of Mind must reveal.  It was a mystery to me then, but I have since understood it.  All Science is a revelation.  Its Principle is divine, not human, reaching higher than the stars of heaven.

Am I a believer in spiritualism?  I believe in no ism.  This is my endeavor, to be a Christian, to assimilate the character and practice of the anointed; and no motive can cause a surrender of this effort.  As I understand it, spiritualism is the antipode of Christian Science.  I esteem all honest people, and love them, and hold to loving our enemies and doing good to them that “despitefully use you and persecute you.”