September 18

September 18 – AM          Page 8, Bill’s Story, Chapter 1

Trembling, I stepped from the hospital a broken man.  Fear sobered me for a bit.  Then came the insidious insanity of that first drink, and on Armistice Day 1934, I was off again.  Everyone became resigned to the certainty that I would have to be shut up somewhere, or would stumble along to a miserable end.  How dark it is before the dawn!  In reality that was the beginning of my last debauch.  I was soon to be catapulted into what I like to call the fourth dimension of existence.  I was to know happiness, peace, and usefulness, in a way of life that is incredibly more wonderful as time passes.

September 18 – PM           Page 50, We Agnostics, Chapter 4

In our personal stories you will find a wide variation in the way each teller approaches and conceives of the Power which is greater than himself.  Whether we agree with a particular approach or conception seems to make little difference.  Experience has taught us that these are matters about which, for our purpose, we need not be worried.  They are questions for each individual to settle for himself.
On one proposition, however, these men and women are strikingly agreed.  Every one of them has gained access to, and believes in, a Power greater than himself.  This Power has in each case accomplished the miraculous, the humanly impossible.  As a celebrated American statesman put it, “Let’s look at the record.”