Speaker: Have you ever wondered whether in this age what seem to be incurable conditions can really be healed by prayer alone? When a woman from Trenton, New Jersey, turned to God in prayer, she saw her daughter healed of what was considered to be an incurable bone condition. These two people certainly found that prayer is just as practical for healing today as it was in Biblical times. Mrs. Louisa Hare and her daughter, Nancy, who is a young woman now, are both here to tell us about the experience.

Suppose we ask you to begin, Nancy. How old were you when all of this started?

Nancy: I was about seven. The trouble with my hip started when I was at school. I just couldn't walk right. My leg and hip hurt, and I limped. Everybody noticed it. And then you took me to the doctor, Mother.

Mrs. Hare: Yes, and over a period of two years there were many consultation, examinations, and X rays, and she was sent to several hospitals in the state. We were told Nancy had a disease that caused the hipbone to soften and that affected the leg. Well, she was placed in a cast extending from the chest to below her left knee. Every other month new X rays were taken, more examinations made, and new casts put on. As I say, this went on for about two years, but the condition didn't improve. During this period, the foot and leg didn't develop normally.

Nancy: My school made arrangements for a tutor to help me with my studies. You see, I was on crutches because of the cast and had to either stand up or lie down.

Mrs. Hare: Finally we took Nancy to a famous bone specialist. He told me there was absolutely no hope of her ever walking again without crutches. When I heard that, I asked the doctor in desperation what he would do if he were confronted with such a problem for his daughter. And he said he would pray. I told him I had been praying, and he said, "Perhaps you haven't been praying right."

That evening I offered a very sincere prayer to God. I asked to be shown just what to do and how to do it. Several days later, while I was waiting for my appointment at the hairdresser's, I came across a copy of The Christian Science Journal. I opened it at random to a testimony of healing which impressed me very much. And that evening I borrowed from the Christian Science Reading Room a copy of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy.

This was the first I had known of Christian Science. My husband and I began to read Science and Health right away. The chapter on Prayer helped me very much. I'd always prayed very sincerely, but now I realized it was a different prayer that Christian Science taught: not a prayer of asking for things or changes, but asking for more understanding of God, seeking more spiritual growth.

I found a list of Christian Science practitioners in the Journal and called one. He very lovingly came out and talked to us and agreed to help us through prayer.

Nancy: I remember the practitioner's telling me about Jesus healing the blind man and about the lame man that was healed. And he read to us from the Bible.

Mrs. Hare: Yes, he read from Psalms, where it says, "Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits: who forgiveth all thine iniquites; who healeth all thy diseases."

And then he read from Science and Health, where it says (p. 162): "Christian Science brings to the body the sunlight of Truth, which invigorates and purifies. Christian Science acts as an alterative, neutralizing error with Truth. It changes the secretions, expels humors, dissolves tumors, relaxes rigid muscles, restores carious bones to soundness." It certainly comforted us to read that God's power "restores carious bones to soundness." So we decided to depend on God alone, and that evening we dispensed with all the medicines we had.

When it was time for the cast to be changed, I became quite fearful, because I just didn't know whether to have one put on again or not. I remember asking the practitioner, and he said, "We'll pray about it, and I'm sure God will direct you." Well, that same evening we went to the doctor's office, and he took the cast off. When he picked up the phone to arrange for a new cast, I told him I would like to take Nancy home and think a little more about this, and he agreed.

Nancy: That was the last time I wore a cast!

Mrs. Hare: The practitioner was helping through prayer all during this period, and the healing was going along rapidly. After about two or three weeks, Nancy was able to get around without even the crutches. Within just a few months the leg and the foot grew to be normal.

Nancy: I learned to skate after that. I do a lot of skating—I love it—and swimming, horseback riding, and dancing. I'm so grateful to God for the healing.

Speaker: Thank you both for telling us about that healing. You certainly have reason to be grateful.

Friends, when Mrs. Hare was earnestly trying to learn how to pray aright, she was only doing what so many seekers for enlightenment have been doing for centuries. The Bible records that on a particular day many years ago the disciples of Christ Jesus came to him and said, "Lord, teach us to pray." The Master gave them what has since been known as the Lord's Prayer, and he added, "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find."

This comforting promise is applicable today. Nancy's mother told us that her prayer, as she learned to pray in Christian Science, was based on asking for a better understanding of God and seeking more spiritual enlightenment.

Now, to ask for a better understanding of God is to ask to learn more of good. You see, Christian Science teaches that the Supreme Being is not a corporeal person sending sickness to His children. Rather, God is ever-present divine Life, Truth, and Love, giving only good to man, who is created spiritual and perfect in His image and likeness.

In one of her writings, Mrs. Eddy says (No and Yes, p. 39), "Prayer can neither change God, nor bring His designs into mortal modes; but it can and does change our modes and our false sense of Life, Love, and Truth, uplifting us to Him." Effective prayer, then, is not pleading with divine Love to change a diseased condition, but is, rather, a sincere desire to realize the true nature of God as Life, Truth, and Love and man's relationship to Him. As the image and likeness of God, man is rightly active, unhampered, and completely free. The opposite view that man is hopelessly diseased, in pain, or bedridden is the false picture of God's perfect child. In the measure that we hold to the true concept of man's completeness as God's reflection and turn thought away from the false evidence concerning the physical body, health becomes apparent.

Now, if the physical condition fails to yield quickly to prayer, perhaps we need to seek more spiritual growth, or understanding. Growing spiritually is accomplished as we rid thought of fear, discouragement, and worry by knowing why it is always safe to depend on God, divine Love, as the one sure source of health and freedom. It is a question of learning that God is all-powerful Spirit, or Mind, always present, of knowing that no material power or law can upset God's plan of continuous good for man. It is a question of turning away from material means and methods and making the decision to trust God alone. In Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy gives this assurance (p. 368): "When we come to have more faith in the truth of being than we have in error, morefaith in Spirit than in matter, more faith in living than in dying, more faith in God than in man, then no material suppositions can prevent us from healing the sick and destroying error."

Sincere prayer, founded on a clear concept of God and of man's perfection as the spiritual reflection of infinite Spirit, is always effective. Thus the promise of Jesus is fulfilled, "For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth."

The musical selection on the program was Hymn No. 384 from the Christian Science Hymnal (When God is seen with men to dwell).