Page:Christian Science War Time Activities.djvu/52

 country was filled to overflowing with those who sought a refuge from the storm of war and among them were many to whom the fund of The Mother Church came, bringing peace where there had been anxiety, health where there had been sickness, and trust where there had been only the blank outlook of utter hopelessness and despair.

What joy it brings to the hearts of all who have helped make the fund possible to hear the following story of one whom the Committee in Zurich was able to aid:

“I became acquainted with a woman who was bending under her load of troubles. She was in debt and lacked even the absolute necessities, her husband being at the frontier. (He had been obliged to do service three times in the interval of one year.) She received only a small subsidy for herself and her child, just enough not to perish from starvation.

“Before the war her husband had a small business and the wife kept a boarding house. They lived comfortably until 1914 when the war started; then misery began. The husband's business failed entirely; the boarders left to serve under the flag and thus a hard time began for the wife. When her husband left for the frontier she was deprived of his support. The state of fear in which she found herself over the rent and the debts to be paid resulted in illness and she had to undergo two operations for goiter. This woman became so irritable and embittered that she made the home for her child a veritable hell. Then error held full sway.

“I felt attracted toward the child, who was about thirteen at that time, and was very much impressed by the confidence she had in God, that they would be delivered from their moral and material misery. I then realized that here was an opportunity to apply the truth of Christian Science and by and by I began to see results with the child. Her disposition became greatly changed so that the mother was astonished. Later,