And it came to pass after a while, that the brook dried up, because there had been no rain in the land.—1 Kings, 17:7.
It is now about eighteen months since I first came into Christian Science, burdened down with about as many claims, both physical and mental, as any one man could carry. The one, however, which I specially wanted to get relief from was a claim known to the medical fraternity as tic douloureux, an acute phase of facial neuralgia, considered by most physicians to be incurable. I had been under the care of four different physicians, one of them a specialist on nervous diseases and a member of the faculty of an advanced medical college and hospital here in New York City where I spent some time. I had had a number of my teeth drawn in the vain endeavor to get relief, and at last had come to such a pass that I was obliged to take large and frequent does of morphine in order to allay the pain. And as even that was beginning to lose its effect, it was decided by my attending physician that my only hope of relief would be to have an operation performed and some of the nerves cut out of my face.
I wish to state here that at that time I was practically an agnostic, believing in nothing beyond this material existence, and it was in this miserable condition of both mind and body that I had concluded to end (as I thought then) the whole wretched business by an extra large does of morphine. Just at this juncture a gentleman suggested to me to try Christian Science, saying at the time that while he knew very little about it personally, he did know of a couple of cases that had been healed by it, and that even if it did me no good, it certainly could do me no harm, and was worth a trial anyhow, for medicine did not seem to help me. I myself knew absolutely nothing of Christian Science, except I understood they healed by prayer, but in my condition of mind at that time I did not care whether the healing was accomplished by prayer or blasphemy, so long as there was a chance for relief. I had not been inside of a church for a number of years but once, and that was to a memorial service held for a wellknown theatrical manager, and my object in going there was to hear some of the leading artists from the Metropolitan Opera House who were to sing.
