When I was six years old, my two brothers and I were taken...

When I was six years old, my two brothers and I were taken away from our parents, and I was put in a Baptist mission where I went to school. At the age of sixteen I was sent to work on a sheep station at Carnarvon, in Western Australia. While I was in the mission, I always went to Sunday School and to church. I came to enjoy thinking about God. At the station in Carnarvon, I often thought about what I had learned through my religious teaching.

However, in my twenties I began to join friends in social drinking, and after several years it was evident that I had become an alcoholic. In retrospect I can see that I was searching for something—some satisfaction from life, and an inner peace I'd never found.

I went to church whenever I could, but I still didn't find any satisfaction. I was jailed many times because of my drinking problem. In 1948, when I was serving a jail sentence for disorderly behavior during a drunken spree, I found what I had been searching for. As I was helping to clean up the prison yard, I pulled part of a Christian Science Sentinel out of a rubbish fire. This Sentinel changed my whole life, and straight away I gave up drinking and smoking. My friends could not understand the transformation in my character.

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August 11, 1980
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