Speaker: Our guest, Albert Engel, of Detroit, Michigan, will tell you how he was healed of severe blood poisoning when he turned wholeheartedly to God for healing. Would you tell us your experience now, Mr. Engel? What were the circumstances?

Mr. Engel: This happened quite a number of years ago at a time of much turmoil in my affairs. I had lost my business. I was confronted with debts, and it seemed I was in a desperate situation all around. But I might say that with this healing which I'm going to tell you about, there came a tremendous change for the better in my whole experience.

In some way I injured one of my fingers. Blood poisoning set in, ultimately affecting the entire hand and arm. There was a good deal of pain, and I became quite frightened about the whole thing.

At first I felt I must see a doctor about it, but I'd become interested in Christian Science some time before this and was beginning to feel that we can trust God's healing power in any situation. This was the first serious physical problem I'd had, but I realized that it was an opportunity to prove God's power to heal physical difficulties. I saw I had to work it out through prayer. I was at the place where I had nowhere else to go except to God, and I knew it.

So I did not make use of any material remedies, but turned earnestly to the Bible and to the writings of Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science. Also, I engaged a Christian Science practitioner, who stood by prayerfully with me.

I told her over the telephone of the physical difficulty, and we also talked again about some of my business problems. There was one particular situation of long standing which was very troublesome. It concerned my relations with a business associate. I greatly disliked this man, had a great deal of contempt for him. There had been a lot of competition between us, and I felt he was blocking my progress.

The practitioner listened quietly. Then she said an interesting thing. She said that I was pointing the finger of scorn at this individual and others and that I needed to get a clearer picture of God and the correct relationship of man to Him. She showed me that I would have to clear up my thinking if I expected to have the truths of God bring healing.

I must admit this didn't appeal to me. I wasn't sure there was anything to clear up. I felt I was in the right, and I was filled with a lot of righteous indignation and, I realize now, with a good deal of bitterness and resentment too. The practitioner didn't press her views, but just presented them for me to think over. All this made a deep impression on me, and after I had finished talking with her, I found that the pain was gone. This certainly gave me something to think about.

On that day my mother had come to my home for a visit. She was not then a Christian Scientist but a medical nurse, and she was greatly frightened when she saw my condition. She asked to be allowed to put a poultice on the hand, but I refused, explaining that I was depending entirely upon the power of God and needed neither medical nor surgical help. She was not at all satisfied with what she thought to be my capacity to trust God, but she left me alone.

Well, I studied and prayed that day as never before. Gradually I realized that in reality man is the image and likeness of God, a spiritual idea created, constituted, and governed by God, the infinite Mind. I saw that in the relationship of God's ideas there is no competition and no favoritism. I realized that man in the image and likeness of God can never be less than Godlike. He must express all God's qualities. I saw that this must be the truth about me and everyone else. It came to me for the first time that these spiritual facts provided the right basis for my relationships with others and that by accepting them I could learn how to follow the command to love my neighbor as myself.

The warmth and glow of these truths filled my thought, and I went to bed and really slept for the first time in over a week. During the night the infected place opened. It began to drain naturally, and within a few hours I was free. The arm become normal again. When my mother saw the perfect effect of the metaphysical work, she exclaimed, "If Christian Science can heal a thing as terrible as that, it is what I've been looking for!" She also took up the study of Christian Science, had a fine healing, and later became a Christian Science practitioner.

From that time on, things began to change for me. I was able to help the man at whom I'd been figuratively pointing the finger of scorn. In fact, he became a good friend. My business problems cleared up beautifully, and in the years that followed, I experienced an increasing sense of achievement and abundance. The whole thing was a powerful lesson to me, a very helpful lesson, and one I've been grateful for through the years.

Speaker: Yes, I can see it has been a powerful lesson, Mr. Engel, one which has provided you with a sound basis on which to think through all your problems to a right conclusion. Thank you for sharing it with us.

Friends, how often Christ Jesus demanded a radical change in the thinking and living of those who came to him for healing. The sinning were admonished to sin no more; the doubting, to trust; the fearful, to be confident; the impotent, to expect right activity. The Master made these demands because he recognized God as the only creator, as infinite good. He urged upon all, the great need to live and work from a spiritual basis alone.

It was from this basis that the Christian Science practitioner urged our guest to work. He was told that he must get rid of scorn and contempt for his fellow man. You see, Christian Science is in complete accord with the teachings of Christ Jesus. It acknowledges one infinite God, good, the only creator of man.

It's very evident that evil of any kind cannot originate in an infinitely good God, and it follows, therefore, that it can have no place in God's spiritual man. Our task, then, is prayerfully to reason from this perfect basis until we see clearly, as did our guest, that our real selfhood and that of our fellow man can never be less than Godlike, can never express qualities unlike God. Through such prayerful reasoning, we are bringing our thoughts and acts into line with the law of God, and we are obeying the Scriptural command, "Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself."

When our guest's thought was filled with this Christianly scientific thinking, physical healing and improved conditions followed naturally. It can do the same for each one of us as we learn to purify our thinking and rely completely on God's power to heal. This point is brought out clearly in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," where Mary Baker Eddy writes (p. 162), "Christian Science brings to the body the sunlight of Truth, which invigorates and purifies." And a little farther on she continues, "The effect of this Science is to stir the human mind to a change of base, on which it may yield to the harmony of the divine Mind."

The musical selection on the program was Hymn No. 402 from the Christian Science Hymnal (How gentle God's commands).