When a young man, I was a moderate user of tobacco, but soon after I was through school I became a heavy smoker. I was engaged in a business where my time was my own, and there was no restraint on how much I smoked. Several times I attempted with no success to reduce or control smoking through willpower. I did not know then that what I needed was an uncovering of its false attraction and an understanding of God.
Soon after I was married, a friend lent my wife a copy of Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy. We knew that this friend had been healed of a physical difficulty in Science. We had great respect for its true and practical value. In fact, I was a member of an orthodox church but had been attending another church that had a famous choir led by a noted director. It was while singing in this choir that I was induced to join a men's Bible class of the same church, composed of business and professional men.
A question arose at one of our meetings which brought a complete change in my life. The question was, Why are we not doing the healing work that was done in the days of Jesus and the disciples? The minister's reply left me perplexed. I recalled a statement from the Bible (Ex. 15: 26), "I am the Lord that healeth thee." Then I reflected: here we have spent an hour talking about the wonderful healing work accomplished by Jesus and others in his time, and now no one seems to know how the healing work was done. I had heard of several healings that were brought about through the application of Christian Science, one in my own family, a long time ago, although we were not Christian Scientists.
The next Sunday I determined to attend a service in a Church of Christ, Scientist, and see what they had to offer that might reveal to me how healings could be accomplished through prayer. During the service I became fully convinced that the healing done in Christian Science was based on the same Principle demonstrated by Jesus and his disciples. Right then I began to know God and to realize that Mind, not matter, heals all diseases.
From then on my wife and I became earnest students of Christian Science. Not long after that, at a time when we were living in a summer cottage on the beach with no near neighbors or telephone facilities, my wife suddenly became ill and was in great pain. She asked me to know the truth for her at once.
I knew that Christian Science practitioners did their work through prayer and by studying the Bible and Mrs. Eddy's writings. I started in by trying to gain the necessary spiritual understanding from reading the textbook. I read late into the night endeavoring to unsee the error.
As I continued my reading I was to learn that the power of Truth is always operating to destroy error. I came across a sentence in Science and Health I had not noticed before, and it momentarily arrested my attention. It is on page 406 and reads, "The depraved appetite for alcoholic drinks, tobacco, tea, coffee, opium, is destroyed only by Mind's mastery of the body." Then on the opposite page another sentence held my thought for a moment. It reads, "Puffing the obnoxious fumes of tobacco, or chewing a leaf naturally attractive to no creature except a loathsome worm, is at least disgusting."
I passively concurred with what I had just read and gave it no more thought, but went right on seeking the truth for my wife. I did not know at the time that the illusion of the senses had been uncovered.
The next day when I started to my office the following sequence of events occurred. Quite unintentionally as I left my house in the morning I omitted having my usual cup of coffee and a cigarette, which had seemed essential in the past. I gave the matter little thought, but later in the morning I suddenly realized that I had not been smoking. At noon when I went to lunch there was no desire for coffee or the numerous cigarettes which I usually had before returning to my work.
I thought it a little peculiar, but as the afternoon advanced, without my smoking, I knew that something had taken place in my thinking of which I had not been aware. Returning home in the evening I had no desire for my usual pipe of tobacco before dinner. Then I knew I had been healed of the smoking habit, and I have never smoked since.
Not only the use of tobacco had left me but the desire for tea and coffee as well. Also the indulgence in social drinking, which had been acquired, disappeared at the same time, never to appear again. All these habits went without any apparent effort on my part to gain my freedom from them. It was what might be called an impersonal healing through reading Science and Health and in seeking the truth to help someone else.
And I should add that in the morning my wife's condition was better, but she had asked me to continue working for her in Science during the day. When I returned in the evening, the pain had disappeared, and she was entirely free.
My gratitude exceeds expression for Mrs. Eddy, whose writings have made her discovery available to the people of a needy world. She has already proved to be the world's greatest benefactor since Christ Jesus, whose teachings she so faithfully followed.— Washington, District of Columbia.
