While engaged in the practice of the law in my state, it fell to my lot to be appointed by the Court in my county, as the "Committee" of a so-called hopeless lunatic; a man who otherwise seemed to be of sturdy frame and vigor. Having assumed control and charge of his estate and affairs in compliance with the law, I decided, for certain reasons, to visit the unfortunate, who was then closely confined in a narrow cell in jail awaiting his transference to the State Asylum.
On being admitted to the prisoners' quarters my ears were greeted with most dismal yells coming from the cell of the prisoner in question; the jailer telling me that the man had kept up this incessant "raving" for days, until the other prisoners, hardened as they were, begged the authorities to remove the man from the place, as their own mental condition was thereby becoming endangered. The man had torn his clothing from him, and I was told that he had been clothed by the keepers time and time again, but just as often would he tear his apparel from him in his hopelessness. Truly a sad picture of mortal mind.
In the course of the following months I had, through the claim of intense bodily suffering of many years' standing, been driven as a last resort to Christian Science for help; having heard of that method of treatment at least three years before I ventured to appeal to that source for relief. In two weeks after I had begun to be treated, I was perfectly well and rejuvenated. With my recovery came an earnest desire to know and experience more of Christian Science, and I became a close and faithful student of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," by our dear "Mother in Israel." As the days passed by, I began to realize that the law of man was but a mere phantom, and that after all, as our Leader says, "Human laws, if just, are borrowed from the Divine." I was likewise convinced of the truism that, "State honors perish, and their gain is loss to the Christian Scientist. They include for him at present naught but tardy justice, hounded footsteps, false laurels. God alone is his help, his shield, and great reward" (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 358).
