Speaker: One day some years ago a woman faced the choice of living only a few more weeks or of having an operation that would leave her in a wheel chair the rest of her life. But just when everything seemed darkest, she found something that transformed her thinking and led to her complete healing.

I'd like to introduce Mrs. Mildred Howell, of New Holland, Ohio, the woman who actually had this experience. We'd like you to tell us just what took place, Mrs. Howell.

Mrs. Howell: Well, my health had gone down to a point where I was so thin and weak I could barely get about. The doctors finally determined what the trouble was, and that's when they gave me the choice you mentioned. They said there was a large growth that would have to be removed. The operation would involve some nerves and so forth. As a result I would be left paralyzed from the waist down. Without the operation, they said, I would die within six or eight weeks.

I left the hospital and went out to the car where a friend was waiting for me. Then I started to cry. I told her what they'd said, and she finally said to me, "Why not try Christian Science?" Now I knew nothing about Christian Science. She knew nothing about it either, except she'd heard that it healed; so she felt it might help me.

Then I remembered that an aunt had given me a little Vest Pocket Edition of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy when I was a child. So when we got home I hunted for it and finally found it in the drawer of an old dresser. When I opened Science and Health and read the first sentence in the Preface, where Mrs. Eddy writes (p. vii), "To those leaning on the sustaining infinite, to-day is big with blessings," you can imagine the hope that sprang up in my heart.

The thought of God as "the sustaining infinite" was a completely new concept to me. You see, we'd inner had any religious teaching in our home, never read the Bible, never gone to church. And as I read along, I came to the place on page 2 where Mrs. Eddy says: "God is Love. Can we ask Him to he more.?" This astonished me and comforted me. It was so different from anything I'd ever heard before. I thought, "This I can believe; this is the way I've always felt."

I became completely absorbed in what I was reading and read almost constantly for three days and nights. I was learning of a God who is a loving Father, always caring for His children, only giving good, only knowing good; so man in His likeness can only know and have good. And, of course, God being divine Spirit, man in God's likeness would have to be spiritual.

I was so wrapped up in the glory of learning about God, loving Him and realizing He loved me, that I lost all fear and forgot about being ill and dying until I awoke to the fact that all the symptoms were gone, and I felt completely normal. This was the following Monday morning. I'd been to the hospital on Friday, and this was the day I was to go back and give them my decision. I told them that I wasn't having the operation and that I was well. The different ones who'd been in on the consultation—the doctors, the X-ray technicians, the cardiograph man, and so forth— looked at me, and they couldn't understand it. because my appearance had changed so much.

One of the doctors was so interested he asked to take some more X rays at his own expense, and he couldn't find a trace of the growth. Well, from that time on, a whole new world of health and happiness has opened up for me. I kept on studying Christian Science, of course, and joined the church. Over the years all this has brought me continuing spiritual growth in the understanding of God.

Speaker: That's good to hear, Mrs. Howell. Thank you for telling us how you discovered something of the nature of God. What a difference it made in your life!

Now, friends, I'd like to talk a little more about this matter of discovery. The search to know God is like a voyage of discovery, a voyage that has the correct understanding of God as its purpose. First of all, this is not a search for the unknowable. Christian Science explains that a clearer understanding of God is available to all. As Christ Jesus promises, "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto yon."

Of course, the journey to know God takes place in our thinking. So, obviously, material things are of little help in revealing God. They only get in the way. Then what should we leave behind? And what should we take along?

Well, such hampering traits as selfishness and pride, as well as stubborn human opinions, can only be hindrances. Then such things as worldliness, a merely material outlook on life, preoccupation with material possessions or pleasures, in fact, the concept of man as merely physical and mortal—all these need to be left behind.

Now what should we take along? What would be the most valuable assets in the search to understand God? Surely a few would be true qualities of thought, such as integrity and purity, plus a hunger for spiritual things, a deep and sincere desire to know God, and a willingness to accept fresh views of God and man. Also the patience to take the spiritual teachings of the Bible, which Christian Science makes plain, and live them in daily life, particularly the admonitions and commands of Christ Jesus.

Our guest's voyage of discovery began with the first sentence in the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health, where Mrs. Eddy writes (Pref., p. vii), "To those leaning on the sustaining infinite, to-day is big with blessings." Then our guest's discoveries really began, for she started to learn more of God than she'd ever known before. She began to understand Him as divine Love and Spirit. And within this book there are many further explanations of God, such as this one (p. 465): "God is incorporeal, divine, supreme, infinite Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, Life, Truth, Love."

Learning more of God also leads to our discovering more of man, more of our own real being; for man is made in the image and likeness of God. As God's reflection he is spiritual, not material; he is intelligent, perfect. Such discoveries bring us a pure, correct view of God and man which results in healing. This new view brought to our guest a basic, thoroughgoing change in her thinking. It awakened her to her true, spiritual selfhood and wiped out the fearful material picture. As we read in Science and Health (p. 162), "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."

A voyage of discovery to learn more of God is actually effective prayer. It's seeking and finding Him through spiritual understanding. In her book entitled "No and Yes," Mrs. Eddy says, speaking of prayer (p. 39): "It makes new and scientific discoveries of God, of His goodness and power. It shows us more clearly than we saw before, what we already have and are; and most of all, it shows us what God is."

The musical selection on the program was Hymn No. 81 from the Christian Science Hymnal (God is with me).