Testimony of Healing June 29, 1912 Issue

From my own experience I have found that Christian Science...

Floyd C. Shank

From my own experience I have found that Christian Science is practical because it teaches obedience to a divine Principle, whose law does not change with conditions and which does not yield to or conform with common custom or cherished desire. Through a continued effort to live in obedience to this divine Principle my thought is being purified, my desires are finding satisfaction in more spiritual things, and there is being made manifest to me an increasing capacity for both mental and physical activity, all of which is great cause for gratitude.

Having been raised in a state which had adopted prohibition laws, until I was seventeen years of age I had not seen a saloon and little knew what an awful impediment to progress is manifested through the use of intoxicating drinks. A few years later I decided that I would like to travel, and very unwisely kept pleading with my parents until they consented to my looking for employment in another state, where I fancied I would like to be. I was in my second year at college and my eyes caused me a great deal of trouble, and this served as a good excuse for my making the above mentioned change. I had been in this strange city but a few days when I became associated with men who had lived a very sensual life for many years, and they took pleasure in showing me something of the ways of the world heretofore unknown to me. I became intoxicated, and the awful sense of sickness, despair, and separation from good, which accompanied this experience, was such that I prefer not to dwell on it. Nevertheless, this was only the beginning of a few years of sensual living which I then thought necessary in order to be "friendly" with my associates. Smoking was considered one of the essential accomplishments, and when I had learned to chew tobacco without sickly results I began to feel somewhat proud of the various habits formed. All this influence, however, had come from outside environment, for liquor was never used in our home and my father is not a user of tobacco or liquor in any form.

While indulging in the above mentioned habits I became associated with some young folk who are interested in Christian Science, and I want to say that I can never repay them for the good they have brought into my life. Underneath all the worldly living I had always felt a desire for a purer life and hoped some day to find a calling or profession which would enable me to do more in a universal way than a mere business career had to offer. I attended a few Wednesday evening meetings, but had no thought of ever becoming interested in the teaching, and little thought that therein lay relief from the undesirable ways which I had been experiencing for about two years. However, some months later I was given some Christian Science literature, and the first paragraph I read brought the absolute assurance that the answer to every question which had ever occurred to me regarding the ultimate solution of the many problems confronting mankind was to be found in this teaching, and that such was the life-work I had long desired to find. I soon became a regular attendant at the services, and purchased a copy of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" and a Bible. In a very short time I began to care less for smoking (although I was working in a cigar store mornings and evenings at the time), and in about three months I no longer had any pleasure in smoking, but found Science and Health a more satisfying companion. As to drinking, I felt so free from the bondage which had caused me to think it necessary to join in this common custom, that I was delighted to have an opportunity to refuse the invitation of some of my former associates to continue in the old method of living. A sense of firmness and a sure foundation had replaced my former sense of utter inability to refuse to drift with the current of worldly thought. I felt happy that I could do what I knew to be right and not what common custom would lead me to think was right.

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