Christian Science found me a slave to the tobacco habit, and when I think of the years of servitude to that taskmaster I indeed rejoice for my redemption. When I was quite a young man my father gave me a gold watch if I would not smoke cigarettes for one year. I won the watch and kept the promise to the letter by smoking ever so many more cigars and chewing great quantities of tobacco; and when the year was up I was waiting to follow out my sense desires. I smoked incessantly for years after that, even having to get up in the night sometimes to indulge. I had a great desire to stop, but found I could not. I tried it once, and I vowed that never again would I go through such an ordeal.
A copy of Science and Health was loaned to me, and when I had gotten about half through reading it I found that I had forgotten to smoke. I rejoiced in my newfound freedom, though I feared the appetite might return; but it had received its death-blow, and I have not touched tobacco in any form since that time. I am also very grateful for the healing of a number of ailments that occurred about the same time,—chronic bowel trouble and complications arising therefrom. So gently and gradually did the truth work that I did not know at what period the healing took place. Once only has this trouble reappeared, and then it was met and destroyed in one treatment. I used to have a violent temper, and at such outbursts of the animal I have said and done things for which I am now extremely sorry. I do not know who is most grateful for this healing, myself or my friends. I am also thankful to be rid of a catarrhal trouble, which was supposed to be hereditary, and of cramps that caused me great pain at intervals. This trouble has entirely left me. Every winter I had sores on my lips which caused me much annoyance, but they are now a thing of the past. Headaches were very frequent visitors, and now it gives me a great deal of satisfaction to speak the truth to that condition of thought whenever it appears and see it vanish at once. I have routed several attacks of toothache, and this last winter I have mastered so-called influenza, which had come regularly every year. This mastery gives me great assurance, and I am most grateful for it. Eye trouble has been overcome, also a weak back, from which I had suffered ever since I could remember, said to come from kidneys and bladder. Not only was this condition entirely relieved by the truth, but also the bladder and kidney trouble.
With all this overcoming of different ailments, it is only natural that I should have imbibed enough understanding of infinite good to permeate and change my disposition from wrong thoughts and desires to lofty ideals and aspirations. I am not out of the wilderness yet, but I know enough of Truth to know that the power which has been such a factor for good in my life will finish the work without interference on my part. I am ashamed to think of my ungratefulness in again and again refusing to receive the good that God so willingly bestows. I am deeply moved at the realization that I have been privileged to be a partaker in this feast of good at this particular time, when I see individuals all about me apparently in utter oblivion to the truth, knowing as I do that they must all walk the same road at some time. I am thankful to know even a little of man's unity with our Father-Mother God,—that I am a legal heir and not an alien; that I can have dominion in that spiritual sense which results in peace, whereas the service of the world does not bring peace, but only satisfaction for the moment, in having wrested a crown from some one else's brow, or in the delusion that this brings any satisfaction.
