Article November 3, 1956 Issue

THE WAY TO HEAL ENSLAVING HABITS

EVANGELINE PAXTON

Christian Science teaches that love of good, not fear of evil, brings lasting freedom from enslaving habits. This fact was illustrated in the experience of a young mother. She had a talk with a Christian Science practitioner, in the course of which this young woman casually remarked that she smoked cigarettes. The practitioner then asked her: "Do you want to set a good example for your children? Do you want to be unselfish? Do you want to be pure?" The practitioner pointed out that if the answers were Yes, then the woman did not want to smoke.

Several weeks later the practitioner received a letter from this woman, a part of which is quoted here by permission: "It may not surprise you that I have not smoked a single cigarette since our talk. Every time I wanted to smoke, I could hear your voice asking, 'Do you want to be pure?' and I just could not smoke.... For a few days I was actually sorry I had come to see you, but how wonderfully happy I am now not to be tied to something so enslaving and artificial. You know, I had not wanted to quit smoking."

As the Christly qualities became active in this woman's consciousness, the selfishness which the habit had engendered of inflicting smoking on nonsmokers, even on children, melted away. Listening to the Christly command for purity, she no longer gave in to the demand to escape from her anxieties through matter. The desire for purity, for selflessness or spiritual love, brought the healing.

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