Testimony of Healing February 22, 1930 Issue

I am very grateful for the happiness and love that are...

Charlotte T. Perry

I am very grateful for the happiness and love that are coming to me every day through the understanding of the true nature of God and man as taught in Christian Science. I have almost always known about Christian Science, as my parents began the study of it when I was a child; and I took for granted that I could have it whenever I needed it. As I did not see that I had any great need for it, I could not be persuaded to study. However, the time came when I had a definite need for Christian Science, and I found out that it was not something I could take up and put aside at will, but that I must make it my own; so I began to learn how to study. Gradually my interest in the Lesson-Sermons increased, and they no longer bored me as they did before. I was so grateful for my awakening that I wished to become an active member of the Christian Science movement.

Before this time, however, I had acquired the habit of cigarette smoking. I could see nothing wrong in it, in spite of the disapproval of my parents: I just thought they were old-fashioned. Now that I was studying Christian Science earnestly, I found to my surprise that Mrs. Eddy had made some very definite statements about the use of tobacco in her textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," classifying it with alcohol and opium, neither of which I thought of using, as I have always been a very strict believer in prohibition. I had never regarded tobacco in that light before.

My first decision was to be obedient to the spirit and to the letter of this teaching. Later, as I worked it out further by studying the references given in Science and Health and Mrs. Eddy's other writings, I saw how disgusting and offensive a practice it really is, and that no real pleasure could be derived from it. The result was that I have never touched a cigarette from that day to this, as the healing was complete. I am very grateful to be free from that false sense of pleasure in matter and to realize that the only real joy is the joy of Soul, the joy of seeing man perfect as the Father, and knowing that no false sense of pleasure or pain was ever a part of him or ever belonged to him, as the son of God.

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