‘Mrs. ---- is a widow, and an old friend of mine. In February 1905, her only child, a boy of eleven, was in the last stage of a hopeless illness--mitral valvular heart disease, with rheumatism and dropsy. I had an opportunity of a few minutes’ talk with the Christian Science “practitioner”--a sweet, gentle, earnest woman--and asked her if she really thought she would do any good. “Oh yes,” she replied, with a smile of confidence; “I have never known a failure.” “But,” I suggested, “the boy is very seriously ill:” and I explained the nature of his complaint. Still confidently smiling, the practitioner replied, “We have had worse cases than this.” I told her the best medical advice had been taken, and the doctors had all given the boy up. Upon which the lady remarked, with gentle emphasis, “_God_ has not given him up.” That of course was conclusive, and I left her to do her best. I went away at ten o’clock, and then the Scientist seated herself by the patient, read to him from the Bible and Mrs. Eddy’s book, and exhorted him in some such language as this: “You must not think you are ill, my dear little boy. You are _not_ ill: you _can’t_ be ill. God would not make you ill. He made all things good, but not illness”--and so on, and so on. The boy, I am told, heard her patiently but wearily, and at one-thirty he died. Then the practitioner gathered up her books and papers and went away, and that is the end of the story.’ Here we have Christian Science in a favourable light: all the same, it is not a pleasant picture, these falsehoods told to a dying child. If it be not true that God ‘makes illness,’ and if it be not true that God ‘gives us up,’ then I attach no meaning at all to that Name. Let us put ourselves at that point of the case where there appeareth small hope of recovery. The doctors have given the patient up. God, in their opinion, has done the same. The cleric will not say that, not in so many words: _Yet_, he says, _forasmuch as in all appearance the time of his dissolution draweth near, so fit and prepare him, we beseech Thee, against the hour of death, that after his departure hence in peace, and in Thy favour, his soul may be received into Thine everlasting Kingdom_. The cleric does not pray for the patient’s recovery. He does not expect anything to happen, save the patient’s death. He will not point-blank deny the possibility of a miracle: but he neither asks for anything to happen, nor, so far as I can see, wants anything to happen: he only cares to be sure that the patient, who is fast going, shall go the right way. It is here, on this edge of time between life and death, that the professional spiritual healer loves to perform. He desires to make something happen: he will not take it for granted that nothing will happen.