Testimony of Healing July 15, 1905 Issue

It is with deep gratitude to God and to Christian Science...

Thomas G. Bolles

It is with deep gratitude to God and to Christian Science that I testify to my release from the tobacco and liquor habits, hoping this will help others who are in a similar position. I am a traveling salesman, and had been led to believe that it was necessary to drink and smoke freely in order to get business and gain popularity with my trade. I contracted these habits about twelve years ago, when I was seventeen years of age, and frequently carried the drinking to excess. About four years ago I became interested in Christian Science through the healing of my two children of cerebro-spinal meningitis. I took class instruction at once, and during this instruction I was enabled to lay aside my glasses, which I had worn about five years; but it did not awaken me to the necessity of doing Christian Science work for myself or others, consequently I made little or no progress toward the light of understanding. It seemed so much easier to get help from others.

About two years ago I became disgusted with my way of living and decided that I would be happier if I could give up drinking and smoking. I soon found that I could not give them up without help, so I went to a practitioner, and after one or two treatments I lost all taste for either tobacco or liquor.

Two or three months passed without my feeling the slightest desire for a drink or a smoke. I then went on one of my regular business trips of about eight weeks' duration, and the old sense that it was necessary to drink and smoke with my customers, and the fear of unpopularity caused me to take up my old habits again. It was hard at first to take them up, because they had become very distasteful, but I kept at it and they soon had a stronger hold on me than ever before. This put me in a dreadful state of unrest, from which I could get no relief. I would not turn again to Christian Science, because I could not see how I could reconcile it with my business. This condition existed until last spring, when through the loving-kindness of a Christian Scientist I was invited to a reception. I accepted the invitation and found myself among about three hundred practical business men, many of whom are recognized throughout the commercial world as successful men. I heard these men speak of Christian Science in connection with their business, heard them tell of their being healed of drinking and smoking. I heared these men, whose time was far more occupied with business affairs than was mine, telling how and when they found the time to heal the sick and the sinful. This was a great object-lesson to me, it filled me with a desire to do God's work. It made me long to get away from the old sense of things and to help others.

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