Speaker: When an emergency occurs, God's healing power is instantly available. Those who rely on a spiritual understanding of God can learn to meet emergencies successfully, no matter how serious they may be.

Mr. and Mrs. Howard Maguire, of Grand Rapids, Michigan, are here today and are going to tell us how such an understanding helped them when their son was seriously injured.

Suppose you begin, Mr. Maguire.

Mr. Maguire: One day during the summer when our son, David, was working for me on a part-time basis he didn't show up at the office, and I became uneasy. It came to me that something was wrong; so I called my wife and told her what I felt. Then right there at the office I began to know that all of God's children are in His care.

Speaker: I know you are both Christian Scientists, and I'm sure your wife was thinking along the same lines. Tell us what happened then, Mrs. Maguire?

Mrs. Maguire: One of the hospitals called me. They explained that David had been in a very serious accident. He'd been driving on the highway and had lost control of the car. It was demolished, and he had been picked up seriously hurt and unconscious. They asked me if I wanted to call our family physician. I told them that we were Christian Scientists and that someone would come down immediately.

The moment we finished talking, I called a Christian Science practitioner, and he began treatment. Then I called my husband, and he went right to the hospital. On my part, I turned to God as never before and held to the truths I'd learned through the years in Christian Science. I knew that God, Spirit, made man in His image and likeness and that I had to see our boy as really spiritual and perfect in spite of all the material evidence to the contrary. I knew that, in truth, nothing could touch or harm David's perfect selfhood. This helped me overcome some of the fear while I was waiting for my husband.

Mr. Maguire: When I came home from the hospital, I told my wife that the picture was not an encouraging one. In fact, it had even been difficult for me to recognize Dave. The wounds had been stitched up and bandaged, and I'd obtained a private room. Everyone there was very kind and considerate. When the practitioner came to the hospital, the doctor told him he was pleased that Christian Science treatment was being given, because the case appeared to be hopeless from the medical viewpoint. The physician told the practitioner that because of a fractured skull and severe cerebral concussion it might be necessary, if our son lived, to have a series of operations. But he respected our religious convictions and agreed to leave the healing work solely to Christian Science treatment.

So we felt free to rely on the understanding of God which we'd gained in Christian Science. I took Mrs. Maguire down to the hospital, and we stayed by David's side all the rest of the day and all night long. We just filled our thought with all the spiritual truths we knew, sometimes silently, sometimes voicing the truth aloud. We held to the thought of God as the only Life, that God was David's true life, and that Life is indestructible and eternal, not subject to laws of accident or disfigurement. During that first night when David was unconscious and delirious, we also prayed to realize that God is divine Mind and that man expresses this perfect Mind. In the morning David regained consciousness.

For the next few days we endeavored to hold very clearly in thought the perfect concept of man as the image and likeness of God. This correct view of man replaced the false view. We stopped thinking of our son as material and physical and saw him rather as the child of God, spiritual and perfect.

Mrs. Maguire: And this prayerful thinking was most effective, for it freed us from the burden of fear. David certainly made wonderful progress; he was up the third day and walked down the corridor. We wanted to take him home the fifth day, but the hospital asked us to leave him a little longer, although they were giving no medical treatment. But on the ninth day after the accident he left the hospital without any evidence of what had been diagnosed as concussion of the brain and a fractured skull. In another week he was back in school, which had just opened, and there was no question but that he was healed.

Mr. Maguire: I think we might mention that this experience strengthened us all a greal deal. It's our conviction that a spiritual understanding of God is equal to the most serious emergency. Although David had been reared in Christian Science, after this experience he became a much more active and alert student of our religion, and we're all extremely grateful.

Speaker: I'm sure you are. Thank you both for telling us about that fine healing.

Friends, the Bible has long been a source of inspiration and comfort to those in need. The ninety-first Psalm reassures us of God's constant loving care for the man of His creating. We all remember the first verse of this much-loved Psalm: "He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty."

Dwelling "in the secret place of the most High" sounds reassuring, doesn't it? A place where there is no worry, fear, or panic. A place where we are always aware of God's presence and care. A calm, secure, and quiet place of peace. There is such a "secret place." This place can't be located on a map, because it is a state of consciousness which can be attained only as we uplift thought, through prayer, to God, Spirit, and gain a clearer understanding of the divine power which heals. Then we are dwelling "in the secret place of the most High." That's just exactly what the Maguires did. They turned their thought away from the false view of a material man subject to an accident and discerned the correct concept of man in the spiritual image and likeness of God.

Christian Science explains that God is omnipotent, omnipresent Life and that the real man expresses completeness and perfection. Accident, injury, or sickness cannot destroy this immortal, spiritual relationship. As Mary Baker Eddy says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (pp. 470, 471), "The relations of God and man, divine Principle and idea, are indestructible in Science; and Science knows no lapse from nor return to harmony, but holds the divine order or spiritual law, in which God and all that He creates are perfect and eternal, to have remained unchanged in its eternal history."

You and I can learn to spiritualize our thinking and find "the secret place," where the spiritual state of man is recognized. Prayerfully realizing the truth of God and of man in His likeness will enable us to meet the most serious emergency. In proportion as we attain this "secret place" of spiritual consciousness, healing follows. And we realize that the man of God's creating always abides "under the shadow of the Almighty."

The musical selection on the program was Hymn No. 99 from the Christian Science Hymnal (He that hath God his guardian made).