About four years ago our little boy, who was then three and a half years old, was suffering with a. skin disease for which there appeared to be no relief. Since he was six months old he had been under the care of physicians and skin specialists. Often he was unable to sleep, nor could he digest even the simplest foods. The good doctors did all they could for him, and just about the time referred to above, we took him to one who told us that if we would place him under his care for a year, he would cure him. He also said he would have to be operated on for some nose and throat trouble. This statement brought us first to desperartion. and then to Christian Science.
We had a neighbor who had been healed of consumption through Christian Science, and she was anxious that we try it for our little boy, and loaned my wife some Journals to read. I had been brought up in an orthodox church, and thought I already knew all about Christian Science, though I had never talked to a Christian Scientist on the subject nor read any Christian Science literature; but at last, I gave a half-hearted consent for my wife to take him to see a practitioner whose name we had obtained from one of the Journals, and who was not far from us at the time. My wife came home with her face radiant from the effects of the helpful talk she had had with the practitioner, and following her instructions, the little boy was allowed to eat his first real meal, for which, strange as it seems, he had acquired an appetite. This meal included grapes and other fruit. Not only were there no bad results, but he went to sleep that night for the first time in three years without lying awake scratching, and there has been no return of this trouble. Within a few weeks the outward manifestations of the disease all disappeared, and he has since been a healthy and happy child.
My wife at this time was suffering from a trouble of three years' standing, which the doctor had told her could not be relieved without an operation. She was healed in one treatment in Christian Science. I had for some time been suffering from indigestion, which appeared to be getting worse, and the articles of food which I was unable to eat were growing in number. I was also worried about business, which seemed to be in a bad way, partly, as I believed then, on account of my incompetence. When I realized that "In divine Science man is the true image of God" (Science and Health, p. 259), and knew that I could not then be sick, nor incompetent to do the work given me to do, both of these beliefs faded into their native nothingness, from whence they cannot return.
