Knowing so well what it is to be in bondage to the subtle habit of smoking cigarettes and what it means to be freed from it, and hoping that my experience may be helpful to someone else, I am sending this testimony. I smoked cigarettes regularly for about fifty years. During this time I determined numerous times to stop it and tried to do so, but always failed.
After becoming interested in Christian Science, I heard different ones tell about the cigarette habit leaving them without any particular effort on their part just from the reading of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy; but this was not my experience. I not only had to ask help from a very earnest practitioner, but had to make some effort myself, reading the full weekly Lesson-Sermon from the Christian Science Quarterly each day, and also other Christian Science literature; and I had to reach the condition of thought where I really wanted to give up this habit. After the first treatment by the practitioner, I found I could not take more than two or three puffs of a cigarette without its strangling me; but I continued to hang on to the two or three puffs about four times a day for the next year. I then felt I must complete the job, so asked the practitioner for further treatments. The next morning I found I had no desire for smoking.
I have been benefited from Christian Science in many ways, in fact, in every way. I have been healed of grippe, of severe headache, and of toothache; I have felt the sustaining power of divine Love when experiencing deep grief at the passing on of loved ones who were close to us; I have been very much helped in overcoming bad traits of character, such as quick temper, criticizing my fellow men, resentment, and envy. In fact, when I think of all the help and good I have received from Christian Science, words seem but poor things to express my gratitude, and it is my hope that it may be further expressed in actions.
