Speaker: Today more and more recognition is being given to the healing power of prayer. People want to know how to pray more effectively, how to rely on God alone for help. The experience you are about to hear is a clear-cut example of the power of effective prayer. A young woman seriously injured in an automobile accident and given only a few hours to live had a remarkable recovery through prayer. She's Mrs. Adele Ranck, of Fort Ord, California.

Now I believe this happened a few years back, Mrs. Ranck?

Mrs. Ranck: It happened while I was in college. One evening I was riding in a car when another car smashed into us with terrific force, and I was thrown out. I was unconscious, and they took me to an emergency hospital and called my parents. They told them I had very severe injuries, including a basal fracture of the skull, both optic nerves had been severed, and I had about two hours to live. Immediately my parents called a Christian Science practitioner (I'd been brought up in Christian Science) and the three of them came down to the hospital. My parents were told there was nothing the doctors could do for me. The doctors repeated their statement that I had only a few hours to live.

I was told afterward that I kept repeating the words of Christ Jesus in the Bible, "Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me." And my parents and the practitioner continued to pray, as we're taught in Christian Science, to know that God is the only Life there is, that this divine Life was my life, and that nothing is impossible to God.

I got past the crisis of the first two hours, and then there was a series of other crises. The doctors said that if I lived, I'd be an invalid for life and probably would be blind. But my parents kept on having Christian Science help for me, and one or the other of them stayed with me all the time. I was unconscious for a whole week. But I gradually regained consciousness during the second week. I kept asking them to read me various things from the Bible and from the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy. There's one passage from this textbook that was especially helpful; it is Mrs. Eddy's answer to the question, "What is man?" The first part of it reads (p. 475): "Man is not matter; he is not made up of brain, blood, bones, and other material elements. The Scriptures inform us that man is made in the image and likeness of God."

You see, I was getting a clearer sense of the fact that man actually is spiritual, not at the mercy of material injury, because he is the image and likeness of God, divine Spirit. I knew that in spite of the appearances, this was the truth, and it would heal me.

Later, something else that helped me a great deal was the Christian Science hymns. I couldn't see well enough to read, because my eyes were completely crossed; so I used to sing all the hymns I could remember, especially one that says (No. 412), "O captive, rise and sing, for thou art free." I realized that in reality I was free, and I didn't have to be captive to any material law.

I was cared for at the hospital two weeks, but no medical treatment was given. Then I was moved to the college infirmary, and I was there four more weeks. Then I was able to go home. When I left, the doctor, who was a famous brain surgeon, said to my parents, "Prayer healed your daughter!" And it was so true. There's been all sorts of predictions about permanent disability, but every single injury was healed. I could move about in a normal way and had full use of all my faculties.

Later I was required to have a complete physical examination in order to re-enter college, and everything was found normal, including my eyesight.

I'd like to say, too, I think I grew more in spiritual understanding within that six weeks' period than I had in my whole nineteen years before.

Speaker: Well, you certainly turned that experience into an opportunity, didn't you, Mrs. Ranck, an opportunity to learn how a deeper understanding of God can bring healing.

Our guest's experience is a valuable one to consider. It shows so clearly what a powerful healing force true prayer really is. And Christian Science makes this prayer of Spiritual understanding available to everybody, at all times, in any situation, everywhere.

But just what is the prayer of spiritual understanding that heals? Christ jesus revealed what it is. His prayers were a deep, abiding consciousness of man's perfection as the image and likeness of God, divine Mind. Such prayer healed all those who came to him. But the great Teacher also left an inspiring promise for every one of his followers, in all time to come, when he said, "All things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive."

Christian Science accepts this promise of the master Christian with complete confidence, as Mrs. Eddy explains in Science and Health, where she writes (pp. 12, 13), "In divine Science, where prayers are mental, all may avail themselves of God as 'a very present help in trouble.'"

Now right here I'd like to take a moment to explain a very important point. It's this: True prayer does not plead with God to heal a mortal, material body. Why is this so? Because God, being infinite Spirit, unchanging, eternal Life, the only Mind or intelligence, is not the creator of matter or a material body. Man, in God's likeness, is perfect, spiritual, indestructible. Man's real life can never be interrupted, never harmed, never separated from its divine source God. The fact is, man is always harmonious and free.

But, quite naturally, someone may be asking: "What about the materiel body? It certainly appears very real. And it often seems to need a great deal of healing, renewing, strengthening. This was certainly true in Mrs. Ranck's case."

That's a good question. And there's a completely satisfactory answer for it, which is this: The material body being the outward manifestation of human, material thinking is subject to the discord ant beliefs entertained by the human mind. Then it's evident that before there can be any real improvement or adjustment in the human body, the human mind has to be corrected, emptied of its false suggestions. For instance, fear must be replaced with complete confidence in God's infinite, ever-present goodness and power. The belief that man can be subject to accidents must give way to the fact of God's unchanging law of perfect harmony, to the understanding that man is always safe in God's care. And disease, pain, deformity, discord, must yield to the spiritual fact that God, Spirit, created man perfect in God's image and likeness. The realization of this fact is the prayer of spiritual understanding, the prayer that restored complete harmony to our guest when recovery seemed humanly impossible.

As you and I learn more of true prayer, we shall find that we can avail ourselves of God's healing power in every situation. Mrs. Eddy assures us of this in Science and Health, where she writes (p. 231), "If God heals not the sick, they are not healed, for no lesser power equals the infinite Allpower; but God, Truth, Life, Love, does heal the sick through the prayer of the righteous."

 The musical selection on the program was Hymn No. 284 from the Christian Science Hymnal (Prayer is the heart's sincere desire).