The words, "Then a sort of vision came to my troubled sense, which seemed to waken me to the truth," appearing in a testimony of Christian Science healing published in the Sentinel, arrested the writer's attention and threw upon the screen of human thought the lights and shadows of a healing experience in which twenty years' bondage to the tobacco habit was broken instantaneously through a glimpse of the spiritual idea, the real man.
Corporeal sense had thus far successfully eluded detection as the source of those mentally suggested arguments that smoking tobacco was quite inexpensive, a solace, a comfort, a good companion, and, "Oh, everybody smokes!" Seemingly health had not been impaired, nor had the habit proved objectionable to family or associates. Why, reasoned personal sense, should one seek or desire to forgo smoking? Why is it a weed if lettuce and spinach are not? Is it not salutary as a disinfectant in the mouth and throat? Then wherein is its use evil and why taboo it?
At a previous period, when perfectly and permanently healed of the liquor habit, it had been readily seen and admitted that the use of liquors in any form or degree was an evil, but who could reasonably maintain that smoking tobacco was evil, providing it was not injurious to health? There was willingness to be healed of this appetite, and it was argued that there would be a genuine desire to stop its use providing it could be shown to be an evil and therefore something in the nature of a healing to be desired. Sufficient progress in the study and understanding of Christian Science had been made by that time, however, to preclude any attempt to force the issue through a sense of human will power. If there was to be a parting with pipe and cigar, it was going to be real Christian Science healing or nothing! No human makeshifts would do!
