“What have you been doing, doc?” Willard repeated.  “I’ve heard that Christian Science treatment is wholly mental, but you have been doing some fine talking, first and last.  Some of it has cut home and some has gone over my head.  Does your science reform the drunkard as well as mend broken bones?  I remember you once asked me if I’d like to be freed from it.  Upon my word, I believe it does, though I’m not going to boast until I get out and can prove it.  Have you been treating me for that, Stanley?”

“Yes, I have been trying to make you realize your birthright—­your God-given dominion over all things,” said his friend, in a voice that faltered in spite of himself; “have tried to make you know that you were ‘free-born.’”

“Hold on!  Now you are soaring over my head again,” interposed the young man.  “Just make that clearer in your own language, please.  Bible phraseology always seemed like Choctaw to me.”

“Well, then, Christian Science teaches that God made man the perfect image and likeness of Himself and gave him power to reflect or manifest His dominion over all beings.  It follows, then, that man was never in bondage to anything—­habit, appetite, disease or sin; so he was ‘free-born.’”

“Then how does it happen we find him so tangled up in all sorts of deviltry?” demanded Willard.

“We find the mortal ‘tangled up,’ as you express it, because he has set himself up as an independent entity and claims this entity can be governed by evil instead of good—­with lies instead of truth, with sickness instead of health.”

“You emphasize the word ‘mortal’; so you make a distinction between a man and a mortal?”

“Yes; the mortal is the counterfeit of the real man, like a bogus dollar bill, with no gold or principal to back it.  He arrogantly assumes that he has a will of his own, and this will is subordinate to no other unless he chooses to make it so.  But we find that he reasons falsely when we see how he becomes the slave of all sorts of evil that ultimates in sickness and death,” explained Dr. Stanley.

“Humph!  Then, according to your logic, the Ned Willard whom you know is simply a mortal, physical manifestation of will power, catering to his own appetites and desires, and so becoming their bond servant, and there is no true image and likeness of God, or real man about him,” was the young man’s half-quizzical rejoinder.  “Granted,” he went on, more seriously, “I think I am beginning to see him as he is and has appeared to others.  But now comes the question, ’How is this same Ned Willard going to get rid of the undesirable mortal and find the man?’ It looks a hopeless task to me.”

“You are using the scalpel very freely upon yourself, my boy,” said Phillip Stanley, in his friendliest tone.  “But let us see if there isn’t a different kind of blade that will serve us better.  If you were cruelly bound with thongs, and some friend should pass you a keen-edged knife, you would not sit hopelessly looking at your bonds and still continue to bemoan your bondage; you would instantly begin to sever the thongs and so regain your liberty.  In Christian Science we find the ‘sword of Truth’ with which we begin to cut away, one by one, the bonds of mortal falsities, habits, appetites and belief in evil until, eventually, we shall find our freedom and true manhood.”