Testimony of Healing September 7, 1907 Issue

In 1901, while living in Leadville, Col., I was advised...

Nahum G. Thomas

In 1901, while living in Leadville, Col., I was advised by doctors to go to a lower altitude, as I had been forced to quit work on account of heart disease, dyspepsia, indigestion, and extreme nervousness. I had also learned to drink and gamble, so that I could not save any money. I went to the Republic of Mexico. The change seemed to help me, but the desire for drink was growing stronger all the time. I got to losing so much time that the superintendent of the mine where I worked said that if I did not let the drink alone, he would have to let me out. I did promise him to let it alone, and tried to do so, but it did no good. One day, when I woke out of a longer spree than usual, I found that I had been discharged. I had no money and no friends, but by selling everything I had I got money enough to go to another part of Mexico, and there I got work at my occupation as hoisting engineer. With my late experience fresh in memory, I promised myself that I would never take another drink as long as I lived, and I felt sure that I would keep my promise.

One of my fellow-engineers and myself became very good friends, and I told him of my desire for drink. He happened to be a Christian Scientist, and told me that Christian Science would destroy this desire. I only laughed at him, for I thought it was spiritualism and hypnotism, and that my own will-power was all right. I worked about four months, then the drink got me again, and I was discharged. Now I was worse off than ever, my heart was working very badly and I could not sleep, in fact I was afraid I was going to die. I was told that my friend was going away and I thought I would call on him before he went. I did so, and to my surprise he was as glad to see me as if nothing had happened. He again told me about Christian Science, that it would destroy all desire for drink, and said he would help me if I wished to quit drinking. I could see nothing else that I could do, and so I told him he could treat me. He gave me three present treatments, and left me some Christian Science literature to read before he went away to Boston or New York. About five or six days later I was sitting in my cabin alone, trying to read a Christian Science Journal. I had not read much and did not seem to understand what little I had read, when all of a sudden, my suffering left me. I forgot all about my heart and my short breathing and nervousness. I was perfectly free. From that time on I have had no desire for drink. For fifteen years previous to this, when I was not drinking, I thought I had to take some kind of medicine nearly all the time, but now it is nearly four years since I have tasted any medicine. In a short time after my healing I engaged again with the same company I had been working for, and I worked nineteen months without losing a day, and paid up a debt of over nine hundred dollars, most of which I had borrowed to gamble with. My friend's understanding of Christian Science healed me, by absent treatment, of the tobacco habit, both smoking and chewing, of thirty years' standing, for which I had taken two well-known tobacco cures, one of them three different times.

Am I thankful for all this? Yes, and more, too, if there is more, for I am trying to live my gratitude to Mrs. Eddy and to all who have helped me to an understanding of God.

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Testimony of Healing

I rejoice to be a witness to what Christian Science...