Speaker: Isn't there a deep yearning within each one of us to have a sound, permanent basis on which to build our lives? A foundation so secure that when disaster seems to thereaften, we may remain steadfast unharmed? Mrs. Nellie Wolff of St. Louis, Missouri, overcame such a threat when she began to build her life on the solid rock of spiritual understanding, the understanding of the true nature of God and man. Would you tell us about it. Mrs. Wolff?

Mrs. Wolff: My condition was diagnosed as tuberculosis. There was hermorrhaging, and the medical specialists said I had but a few months to live. I'd been in bed for many months, weak and helpless.

Then my sister-in-law came to visit me and brought some Christian Science literature, which she asked me to read. I was attracted to an article which told of the woman in the Bible who touched the hem of Christ Jesus' garment and was healed of an issue of blood. When I read Jesus' words, "Thy faith hath made thee whole; go in peace," I resolved to learn more about faith. I knew if that woman had been healed, I could be too.

I decided to have no more medical help and asked my husband to get me a copy of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy. As soon as I began to read it, I knew this was the truth, for everywhere I opened the book, I was led to God; and I began to see faith leads to a spiritual understanding of God.

I read almost constantly and had help from a Christian Science practitioner, and things began to improve. Gradually I began to see that a sick body could not be the man of God's creating; God's man is spiritual, perfect, and derives his strength from God. As this dawned on me, I had a feeling of spiritual rebirth and renewal.

I realized I couldn't just sit in bed and read all day. I needed to prove that God's power would sustain me in doing the normal things in my home. So I got up, holding fast to that beautiful statement in Psalms, "In God I have put my trust; I will not fear what flesh can do unto me." I began to do all my work, the laundry and everything, and even put up pickles. The neighbors, who knew how long I had been bedfast, were amazed.

But even though the condition no longer kept me from being active, the final healing didn't come until later. You see, quite a change had to take place in my thinking. Many false traits of character had to be faced and overcome. There was a disposition to speak curtly and unkindly. I was irritable and cross. But all this was healed as I realized how contrary such qualities are to the nature of man's real selfhood.

I had quite a battle with myself before I could accept the fact that man is the perfect child of God and that this was the truth about me. But I learned to reason and declare that since God is perfect, man in His likeness actually must be perfect too.

And so the healing did come. It came when I realized these facts more clearly than I ever had before. Since that time I've never had any more difficulty, and that was more than twenty years ago. Several years later I passed a rigid physical examination in connection with a job I had in a defense plant. I had indeed been made whole, and I felt it within myself. At first I'd thought I just wanted a physical healing, but the joy of learning about God, our Father-Mother, the great Physician, meant even more to me. The dominion, the strength, this understanding brought, the closeness to God in answered prayer—all this is by far the most wonderful of all.

Speaker: Yes, Mrs. Wolff, the true understanding of God as all-loving, all-powerful, ever-present Truth is the most important thing we can have, for this understanding is the basis of our well-being. Thank you so much for telling us your experience.

Friends, we are told in Genesis, the very first book in the Bible, that man is made in the image and likeness of God. Isn't it clear, then, that in order to know more about our own true nature as the likeness of God, we must first understand what God is? The Bible tells us that God is Spirit, that He is Life, Truth, Love.

When our guest opened Science and Health, she found that everywhere it led her to God. This is only natural, for Christian Science is founded on the goodness and all-power of God. But, as our guest found, we need to have more than mere faith in God's power; we have to advance our faith to the spiritual understanding of God. Faith is a firm steppingstone, but it is only a steppingstone to spiritual understanding, which heals.

The turning point comes when we begin to reason from the sound basis of understanding, as our guest did—the understanding that a good God, the only cause and creator, could not possibly make a sick, unhappy, discordant, material man. Nor could He impart unlovely traits of character to His own image and likeness.

But just how does this reasoning heal disease, bring freedom from pain, and restore lost substance? You see, discord of any kind is but a belief in a power or mind apart from God, a belief that there is life, intelligence, and substance in matter. These beliefs are the darkness of material thinking. Now, if we look into a dark, gloomy cave, we see only darkness and gloom. But the minute we turn our backs to the cave and face the sunlight, we see only brightness.

In just the same way, when we turn our thoughts resolutely away from the contemplation of a sick, discordant, diseased body and face the ever-present light of divine Truth and Love, we see only the reflection of Truth and Love, the spiritual man of God's creating. Then fear, doubt, discouragement, pain, disease, give place to the spiritual qualities of courage, peace, love, harmony, health. There is no room for the darkness of mortal beliefs when the light of Truth and Love floods our consciousness.

Mrs. Eddy puts it this way in Science and Health (p. 276): "When we learn in Science how to be perfect even as our Father in heaven is perfect, thought is turned into new and healthy channels,—towards the contemplation of things immortal and away from materiality to the Principle of the universe, including harmonious man." And as our guest found, this is the understanding that brings healing.

As Christ Jesus said, "Whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock: and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock."

The musical selection on the program was Hymn No. 77 from the Christian Science Hymnal (God is my strong salvation).