Most people are familiar with the First Commandment, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." Ex. 20:3. Many learned it in Sunday School and know it by heart. But how many of us realize the healing power packed into those few words when applied to a particular human need?
Mrs. Eddy, the woman who founded this periodical, knew firsthand the healing power of a spiritual sense of this commandment. She wrote: "The First Commandment is my favorite text. It demonstrates Christian Science." Science and Health, p. 340. Let me share an example.
When very new in the study of Christian Science, I asked a practitioner to help me through prayer to quit smoking. I had tried everything, but to no avail. He asked whether I wanted to quit because I was afraid of the physical consequences described on the warning label of each pack, or whether I wanted to be free because God made man free and it was my divine right to glorify God. I replied that it was the latter. The practitioner then explained that I had been bowing down to something besides God, namely, the cigarettes. I was believing that something else beside Him had power over me. I was, in effect, breaking the First Commandment.
