Testimony of Healing January 9, 1932 Issue

About eight years ago I was healed through Christian Science...

Herbert C. Hicks

About eight years ago I was healed through Christian Science of a severe case of conjunctivitis, and was so much impressed thereby that I began to attend meetings in a church of that denomination. After going to these meetings for a year I expressed a desire to join the church, but was told that I must first leave off the use of tobacco, to which I had been addicted for thirty-eight years. I had tried many times to break this habit, usually on New Year's days, but would resume in a week or two, sorrowfully acknowledging to myself that tobacco had become my master. When told what must be done before I could join the church, I replied facetiously that I was going into this thing as one would take the "Keeley cure" for the liquor habit, meaning that I proposed to use all the tobacco I wanted as long as I wanted it, and leave the final result to divine Love, meanwhile promising myself that I would abide by the consequences.

After two weeks had passed, during which I had used far more of the weed than usual, I retired one night and read myself to sleep from one of Mrs. Eddy's books. I awoke after a night of dreamless slumber, and sleepily arising for the day's activities discovered that I was repeating over and over the words, "God is perfect and the real man reflects God." With each repetition there came to me, with steadily increasing clearness, such a vivid realization of the meaning of those words that my first impressions were those of mingled curiosity and alarm. This was followed by a joyful sense of the harmony implied by the words "purity" and "perfection," and an involuntary comparison between my life as I was living it and the exalted mental state I was then experiencing. Language fails to convey any adequate concept of the sense of purity that thrilled through me. For a moment I reveled in a marvelous realization of the truth contained in the words, "God is perfect." I remember that I vaguely questioned why this had happened, and as though in answer a quiet voice seemed to say, After this you can never use tobacco again; and from that moment I have had no desire to use tobacco.

I wish to express gratitude for this healing, and also for the healing of a severe hernia, acute indigestion, and constipation of many years' standing. Great as is my gratitude for these and other healings, however, it is far transcended by my thankfulness for having gained a new and true concept of God, a restful reliance on the "everlasting arms" beneath, and a wonderful freedom from "the law of sin and death."—Herbert C. Hicks, Bangor, Maine.

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