After I had led a dissipated life, my wandering desire was arrested while attending a Christian Science Wednesday evening testimony meeting. The friends who invited me to attend this meeting and I were under the influence of liquor, and our intention was to deride rather than to worship. But the inspired thought which prevails at all Christian Science meetings imbued my consciousness with a sense of soberness and penitence. Since this change of thought I have been gaining a true sense of my relationship to God, who is infinite good, and the fetters of finite sense are falling away. I have been healed of the desire for liquor and tobacco, and these appetites have ceased to be even a temptation to me.
I had many proofs of God's protecting power during the world's greatest conflict. I was engaged in the infantry and went through three of the allied offenses unscathed. Machine gun bullets have passed through my clothes and struck my bayonet. At one time a large shell burst in the midst of four of us, and I was the only survivor. While no part of the shell touched me, the concussion from the explosion threw me off my feet. Who is our enemy? Our Leader tells us in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 10), "Even in belief you have but one (that, not in reality), and this one enemy is yourself—your erroneous belief that you have enemies." Every spare hour I had while overseas I was pondering over the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, learning how to conquer the belief in self or the lusts of the flesh.
Several years before taking up the study of Christian Science I had what was termed by a specialist a severe case of mastoiditis. He said that if I was not operated on in two or three days the result would be death. At the conclusion of the operation the specialist said, "The operation is very successful except for one thing: you will be deaf in one ear because of an injured eardrum." I accepted the belief of deafness and for several years could not hear through this injured ear, until, through the study of Christian Science, the false belief was replaced with the truth of what our textbook teaches on page 213: "Sound is a mental impression made on mortal belief. The ear does not really hear. Divine Science reveals sound as communicated through the senses of Soul—through spiritual understanding."
