Testimony of Healing January 16, 1915 Issue

While confined in a hospital for the insane as a direct...

Eldridge G. Norton

While confined in a hospital for the insane as a direct result of fifteen years of liquor drinking and wrong thinking, with its consequent lapses into dishonesty and misery, culminating in a final attempt to end it all by drowning, I received a note from a Christian Scientist asking me to read daily the fifty-second and fifty-fifth chapters of Isaiah. Knowing her faith, and remembering that I had been successfully treated years before by a Christian Science practitioner, I tried to grasp the spiritual meaning of those comforting words; but after being discharged from the hospital (disgraced in the sight of God and man, as I then saw it), alone in a great city where there seemed to be nothing but liquor, I took to drinking again, and on going on the road, fell in with a drinking crowd. It was not until a devoted mother had sent me a copy of Science and Health along with a Bible of my childhood days that I again threw off the yoke. Just by reading Mrs. Eddy's book, all desire for liquor, tobacco, and evil thoughts, in fact inharmony of all kinds, departed, and a realization came to me of the prophet's meaning when he said, "Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon." This healing took place two years ago.

I have "returned unto the Lord," with the glorious knowledge that evil has no power; and my years of bondage to dishonesty, drunkenness, and other false gods, are over. "The kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost." Through the application of Christian Science I have made demonstrations over physical ailments, and have overcome a hasty temper and much selfishness. All this proves to me that through the understanding of this teaching, all good is possible to man. I am most thankful to God, and grateful to Mrs. Eddy for showing me the way.

Eldridge G. Norton, New Orleans, La.

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