Testimony of Healing February 15, 1913 Issue

With grateful thanks to God, who through our loving...

Frederick W. Ensor

With grateful thanks to God, who through our loving and faithful Leader, Mrs. Eddy, has again revealed the spirit of Christ, Truth, so clearly in Christian Science that all may read and understand the true Science of Life, which sets us free from the self-bound sense of fear, ignorance, superstition, disease, and pain, to which, as St. Paul says, the mortal sense of humanity is heir, I send the following testimony. I do this trusting that others who are bound as I was may have hope, and realize that the Christ-power is in the world today to set them free from all ills, if they will but turn their thoughts earnestly in the right direction and honestly seek for the Science, or truth of Life, with an unbiased and open mind.

For twelve years I was addicted to the liquor habit and its accompanying evils,—mildly at first, but afterward in its worst form. I drifted into this habit through taking stimulants to release me from the ague of malarial fever, though neither liquor nor drugs ever helped me for any length of time. Finally I turned to stimulants for relief from all discords, and strong drink soon became my master. If I went without it, I felt depressed and ill; if I indulged in it, it was to excess, which usually ended up with delirium and nearly death. Needless to say, when I first found the habit growing on me, I tried all I knew to break away from it through will-power, drugs, and one or two so-called "cures," but none of these were of any lasting benefit.

At this stage, when I seemed absolutely without hope, and began to think I would eventually come to my end in an insane asylum or the gutter, my attention was drawn to Christian Science by a relative who knew what I had suffered and what a struggle I was having for existence. At first I would have none of it, and laughed at the idea, as I thought it was some new society religious fad; but this same relative sent me the text-book, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mrs. Eddy, and as I was at this time in a new mining or prospecting camp in the veld, without much reading matter, I began on this book. After I had finished the chapter on Prayer, I became interested, for I realized that if there was nothing else in Christian Science there surely was no hypocrisy or cant in its teachings. After studying for about a month, the light or understanding of the substance, or the spiritual reality, the truth about Life, God, taught and demonstrated by Jesus the Christ, began to dawn in my consciousness. For the first time I realized that I had not indulged in liquor, and had had no desire for it since I began to study the book. Since then, five years ago, the habit has not troubled me, and only one who has been through the experience can understand what a blessing this freedom is.

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