On this program J. Henry Ball of Los Angeles, California, told of his own experience. The program was as follows:

Speaker: Have you ever noticed we're sometimes inclined to resist or even push away the very thing we need most? After our guest put aside his reluctance to welcome the availability of God's healing power, he was restored to health when his condition seemed beyond hope. But here is J. Henry Ball of Los Angeles, California, to tell you about it himself.

Mr. Ball: Late in 1929 my family physician rushed me to the hospital. After a thorough examination by six or seven specialists, the doctors declared that I had a quick-growing cancer, and that my time was short. I was told that I was too far gone for treatment. Since no more could be done for me, I was taken home. At this point I called a very close friend and asked him if he would take care of my family—my wife and two young sons. Although he was not a Christian Scientist, he knew friends who had been healed and urged me to try it. But I had lost interest in religion; so I didn't pay much attention to what he said. However, he was persistent.

Then a friend of his loaned me a book on Christian Science entitled "Miscellaneous Writings" by Mary Baker Eddy. I took it, although I didn't read it. Two weeks later this friend telephoned me. Since he was coming to visit me. I began to read the Preface to this book in order not to appear ignorant or ungrateful. Immediately I became interested, and I read on and on. As I read I felt encouraged, and strength began to return. The next morning, after weeks in bed, I was able to get up and visit a Christian Science Reading Room. I wanted to go down myself and get a copy of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mrs. Eddy.

When I first started reading, it was just words to me; so I went to a Christian Science practitioner, who helped me awaken to the spiritual meaning of what I was reading. Strangely enough, I didn't think so much of my need for healing; I just wanted to understand more of the textbook and what it teaches concerning God.

This practitioner told me in a most reassuring manner that man, being the image and likeness of God, could not really have a disease called cancer, because God, who is divine Love, the creator of all, never made disease, or any other evil—that actually there is no room for disease, since God is everywhere. This led me to reason that for everything real that exists there must be a Maker, a cause, and I began to see that God, who is good, is the cause of all existence, the cause of my existence. This study went on for a period of months.

As time went on, wonderful things started to take place. Not only did the disease disappear, but one by one headaches, stomach trouble, and a long list of other inharmonies left me. Some time after I'd recovered, our former family physician met us in a restaurant, and he was amazed. He told me he couldn't believe I was alive.

Actually my whole life was changed. So much so, it's difficult to describe in words. I learned how to overcome grudges I had held for years. After all the good that has come to me and my family in the more than twenty-six years since, is there any wonder that I am grateful for what I have learned about God's love and goodness? And I am so glad that I had the opportunity to tell my experience here.

Speaker: And we're glad too that you could be with us, Mr. Ball. It certainly was a fine healing.

It's evident to all of us that our guest's willingness to open his thought to accept God's goodness and love was the turning point in his experience. How encouraging it is to know that each one of us can be helped in proportion as we become receptive, that is, gain a willingness to accept the blessings God has in store for us.

Now you may not consider yourself religious. You may even regard yourself as a skeptic or as too materially-minded to be able to rely on God as our guest did. But it's never too late for any of us to become receptive to good. So great is God's love, so infinite is His power, that you and I need only turn to Him honestly and sincerely to be guided and helped. There is no need to let self-condemnation, stubbornness, or false pride stand in our way. For divine Love is always at hand to melt away all that would hinder our spiritual progress and bring the spiritual awakening which heals today as in Bible times.

Such awakening, such opening of the door of thought, is described in a booklet you've no doubt heard us mention on these programs. It's our free booklet, "Healing Through Spiritual Awakening." I'd like to read a few lines from it because they have such a direct bearing on how our guest was healed.

Here they are: "Christian Science reveals that no matter how grim may seem the human problems that face us, we can always wake up spiritually to the truth that makes us free. This truth is the expression of God, who is infinite Truth. We read in the Bible, 'Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.' Christ is shown in Christian Science to be the eternal Truth that Jesus expressed, Truth that filled his whole being with light, Truth that is always present and always available to men. The Christ, Truth, floods with healing illumination all the dark corners of human consciousness, when it is welcomed in. It awakens us, as the Master awakened Lazarus, to recognize that God is our Life—sinless, joyous, limitless Life. It awakens us to see that our true spiritual selfhood is made in the image and likeness of God and that evil is powerless to undo God's work or blot out God's image."

Now what I've just read points out that you and I can begin right where we are to accept the blessings which come when we understand the all-power and ever-presence of infinite Life. We need to know that in divine Life there can be nothing unlike God, no disease, no uncontrolled growth, no fear, hatred, or suffering. Let us claim this Life as our own by knowing that man is spiritual, inseparable from God today and forever.

Such reasoning, such spiritual awakening, is true prayer. The inevitable outcome is described in these lines from Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy (p. 14): "Become conscious for a single moment that Life and intelligence are purely spiritual.—neither in nor of matter, —and the body will then utter no complaints. If suffering from a belief in sickness, you will find yourself suddenly well."

The musical selection on the program was Hymn No. 201 from the Christian Science Hymnal (O do not bar your mind).

The Lord God is a sun and shield: the Lord will give grace and glory: no good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly. O Lord of hosts, blessed is the man that trusteth in thee.—Psalm 84:11,12.