Speaker: I think you'll find that today's program sheds helpful and interesting light on one's relying on prayer alone for physical healing. Our guest first resisted the idea of spiritual healing, but later he experienced a complete healing of a condition thought to be hopeless. We've asked Leslie Twigg-Patterson, of Melbourne, Australia, to tell you of his experience.

We're glad you could be with us, Mr. Twigg-Patterson. Now tell us what happened.

Mr. Twigg-Patterson: It's very good to be here. Well, when I was a youth about fifteen years old I was working on my uncle's farm in Australia. I wanted to be a land owner; so I went down to him for training. But I got lamer and lamer, until I got so lame that I couldn't work. He sent me to the city, and there the trouble was diagnosed as tuberculous periostitis, a disease of the covering membrane of the bone. The next two years I spent on my back in an iron splint extending the full length of my body. At the end of that period I was told I could use my leg again.

But although the physicians said the disease was cured, my parents and I still lived under the constant fear of tubercular reinfection. Also I became subject to rheumatism, and the pain and aches at intervals would fill me with dread that perhaps the old complaint had returned. I took prescribed medicines almost continuously and was a frequent visitor at the doctor's.

In about four years' time the disease returned, and I was kept completely on my back in bed or on a couch with my leg in splints. I became very unhappy and fearful. It was twelve months before I was allowed up, and for the next four years I got about on crutches with one leg in iron splints and a raised boot on the other.

This was the condition I was in when Christian Science came into my life. When I first heard about it, I didn't readily accept it. I couldn't understand how Christian Science could say disease was un real when I'd been trying for twelve years to find a cure for a diseased leg. But around about this time I joined a singing class. And in that class I met a very fine-looking girl of whom I became very fond. She told me that she had been healed of pernicious anemia through the understanding of God she'd gained by studying Christian Science. She told me I could be healed too, and she gave me a copy of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy.

I started to study right away, and there was definite improvement in my physical condition. Also I gained a feeling of confidence in what I was reading. I decided to have Christian Science treatment. Gradually I saw that prayer is not a petition, asking that one be made perfect, but it is a realization that God is Love and the perfect creator and that man in God's image must be perfect too.

After I had been reading Science and Health for a while, I began to see what Mrs. Eddy meant by saying evil and disease are unreal, even though they seem so real from a human standpoint. I was filled with a deep conviction of evil's unreality and of trust in my newfound knowledge that God, good, is All, that He is an ever-present, all-powerful, all-loving Father-Mother. I could accept the fact that evil is no part of God's creation and therefore unreal. I knew I had now found my God and His eternal Christ.

Fear no longer had dominion over me. I never visited the doctor again, and I discarded all medicines. At the end of a few weeks I took off the iron splints, and within four months I was walking and running about without even a limp, and this was on a leg that had not been walked on for over five years previously. My fear and dread of the disease were gone, and I have had many further blessings in the years that have followed.

I might add that I married the girl who had brought Christian Science to me. I took out a firstclass life insurance policy with the leading company in Australia. I told the examining doctor about my previous trouble, and he went over the leg again very thoroughly and gave me a clean bill of health.

Speaker: Thank you, Mr. Twigg-Patterson. We enjoyed hearing your healing, and we are glad you could be with us during your visit here. The resistance you'd felt toward relying on God alone for healing certainly disappeared. You began to understand the answer to the question, "How can Christian Science say disease is unreal?"

Today, friends, we're going to talk a little more about this important question. Perhaps the discovery of Copernicus, the Polish astronomer, can help us here. Before he developed his theories in the sixteenth century, it was widely believed that the sun revolved around the earth. It was easy to believe this, because everyone seemed to see it with his own eyes. But the correct understanding of astronomy proved just the opposite.

As astronomy reverses what our eyes tell us about the earth's movements and shows us what's actually true, so the teachings of Christian Science correct what the senses tell us about man. The senses tell us that man is material—a collection of material elements; that he's subject to disease; that he's at the mercy of epidemic or disaster. And for a number of years that view of man held our guest in bondage. But he learned through Christian Science that this is not the truth of man. As the Bible declares, God made man in His image and likeness. Since God is Spirit, man must be spiritual. It's this correct concept of God and of man in His likeness that brings healing.

This important distinction between the evidence of the senses and the spiritual understanding of the nature of God and man is apparent as we study the healing works of Christ Jesus. Regardless of the material evidence, whether it was paralysis, or blindness, or even death, Jesus was able to realize that such things could not be present in God's perfect creation. He acknowledged as real and true the one perfect God and man as God's perfect spiritual likeness. He said plainly, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as you Father which is in heaven is perfect."

So the term "real" in Christian Science refers to the one perfect God, Spirit, and to man, His spiritual likeness. The term "unreal" refers to just the opposite, the material or physical, with its attendant inharmony, imperfection, sickness, and sin, which seem so real and true in human experience. When God is understood to be divine Love, allpowerful and entirely good, it's evident that anything unlike Him must be powerless and unreal. It follows that affliction and disease are no part of God's creation.

To the degree that this spiritual understanding fills and enlightens our thinking, it dispels ignorance and fear and sin, the very foundations of disease and discord. We experience regeneration, healing, and harmony. In Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy sums up these thoughts. She writes (p. 490): "Human theories are helpless to make man harmonious or immortal, since he is so already, according to Christian Science. Our only need is to know this and reduce to practice the real man's divine Principle, Love."

The musical selection on the program was Hymn No. 134 from the Christian Science Hymnal (I look to Thee in every need).