Article December 6, 1969 Issue

Breaking the Smoking Habit

MARY BEACH

Take heart, all who are battling to break the smoking habit. There is a way! It is a way far more effective than the exercise of human willpower, which may control the false appetite but does not destroy it. It is the way shown by Christ Jesus, who demonstrated how the healing power of the living God touches humanity with a regenerating influence sufficient to free the receptive thought from enslavement of every nature.

Mortal mind, coming in the guise of pleasure in matter, seeks in various ways to justify the use of tobacco. The suggestions that smoking relaxes one, comforts in time of trouble, clarifies thinking, is socially advantageous and a mark of sophistication or charm, are links in the mental chain that holds the smoker in bondage.

Christian Science teaches that the basic error from which this chain of illusions is forged is the false belief that there is life, substance, and intelligence in matter. This misconception pictures a mortal man whose life seems to be in a physical body and whose intelligence seems to be embedded in matter. He is plagued by an urge to gratify supposed physical senses and is subject to thoughts of sin, sickness, and death.

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