I became interested in Christian Science at the age of fourteen, when I experienced a quick healing of inflammatory rheumatism. Christian Science treatment completely healed the difficulty, and, contrary to the medical opinion expressed before Christian Science treatment was requested, I have not had a recurrence of the old attacks and have enjoyed excellent health.
During World War II, while with the Navy and attached to a destroyer operating in the South Pacific, I was with an aircraft carrier's task force, traveling in the Coral Sea. On one particular occasion I went on watch at midnight. In about an hour we found ourselves in the midst of a typhoon. High winds ripped through our mast and stirred up tremendous waves. Our ship lost all the lifeboats, all the radar antennas, our blinker lights, and even much of the mast.
During one of the worst rolls the ship took, when we were close to turning over, the thought of God's presence came to me in these words from a hymn by Mary Baker Eddy (Poems, p. 12):
