Speaker: What an atmosphere of security, wholeness, peace, and joy there is in a home when family unity is based on an understanding of God as divine Love! That was the discovery our guests made, and it completely changed their lives. I'd like you to meet Mr. and Mrs. C. Douglas Jenkins, of Sacramento, California. They're going to tell you how this clearer concept of God brought healing to their family and how it helped them achieve and maintain a fine sense of family unity.

Suppose you begin, Mr. Jenkins, by telling us just what led up to these healings.

Mr. Jenkins: Well, I might start by saying that it took a healing to convince me. My wife had been raised in Christian Science, but for a long time after we were married, I didn't really accept this religion. But one time our baby son was very ill, critically ill. I insisted on calling a doctor. But the child grew worse, and finally he was given up. Then my wife called a Christian Science practitioner, and the child was healed very quickly. Of course, I was very happy about that.

Mrs. Jenkins: And it was only about a month later that Christian Science healed you!

Mr. Jenkins: That's right. I'd suffered from sinus trouble most of my life; I'd tried all sorts of remedies. Then it flared up in a very serious form, complicated by pneumonia. I had a great deal of pain, and finally I fell into a coma.

Mrs. Jenkins: I called the practitioner, and he came to the house.

Mr. Jenkins: When I came out of the coma, he was sitting by my bedside, praying. Very shortly I fell into a natural sleep; and when I woke up, there wasn't any more pain. I was completely relieved. Well, frankly, I just couldn't understand it. I asked my wife what in the world had happened. She said it was the result of the Christian Science treatment, and right away I decided that if anything could do that for me, I needed to know more about it. So I began delving into "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy. I really studied it earnestly, along with the Bible. And it gave me a whole new approach to things, a spiritual approach. I began to be more loving, more thoughtful.

Mrs. Jenkins: Love just flooded our home as a result of all this study. The whole atmosphere was changed; in fact, that was what saved our home.

Mr. Jenkins: You see, we'd been steadily growing apart. I guess we both wanted our own way about little things and big things too—raising the children, what kind of entertainment we wanted, recreation, everything. But as we studied Christian Science, we began to learn the true meaning of love. The selfishness began to fall away; we saw there was actually more fun and happiness in being considerate of other members of the family.

Mrs. Jenkins: We'd been struggling for several years. Looking back now, I can see it would have been only a matter of time before we would have gone separate ways completely.

Mr. Jenkins: Then later on, my wife also had a wonderful physical healing.

Mrs. Jenkins: Yes. That was when I was expecting another child. I had a physical examination, and the doctor discovered I had a tumor. He said I'd have to be operated on after the baby was born. But Christian Science had taught me that disease always comes from wrong thinking of some kind, and I knew what needed to be healed in this particular case— resentment. I was resentful over having another child; that was what had to be healed. So I told the doctor Christian Science would heal the condition.

We went away for a few days so that I could study. I knew I couldn't be resentful if my thought was pure; so I prayed for spiritual purity. I took my Bible and Mrs. Eddy's writings and studied diligently. I wanted to understand more of the purity, the love, that belong to man in the likeness of God. As a result, I felt a deep sense of spiritual love. I lost all the resentment, and I wanted the child more than I'd ever wanted anything.

Two weeks later I went back to the doctor for another routine examination. When he got through he turned to his nurse and said, "But there was a tumor there!"

And I said: "There was, all right. But I told you that it was a lump of resentment and that Christian Science would heal it, and it has."

So you can see how much the understanding of divine Love has done for us. And we've been able to share it with others. During the next few years after my healing, we opened our home to a number of children from broken homes and to some others that needed special love and care.

Mr. Jenkins: We had a large house by then; so we used part of it for a day nursery. We even provided a home for some of them that needed it. It was a wonderful opportunity to give these children a real sense of home.

Mrs. Jenkins: Finally we ended up with a whole school of six hundred boys!

Mr. Jenkins: You see, I was asked to serve as Christian Science Chaplain at the State Correctional School for boys. So I gave up my business, and we moved to a small town nearby. I served for three years as Chaplain.

Mrs. Jenkins: And our own family—we have four boys—well, we've never lost our sense of family unity and love, enjoying things together.

Speaker: Thank you very much, Mrs. Jenkins, and you too, Mr. Jenkins. We surely appreciate your willingness to share those healings with us.

Our guests' experiences cover a wide range of problems in their family, all of them resolved through spiritual means alone—through prayer—through gaining a truer sense of God as divine Love.

The religion Christ Jesus taught was founded on divine Love. And divine Love imparts the ability to express love in human affairs. I'm sure most of you are familiar with this saying of Jesus recorded in the fifteenth chapter of John's Gospel. These are his words: "This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you."

Thought which is inspired by divine Love looks beyond the false, material evidence—the discord, hate, anxiety, sickness, fear—and recognizes man's true nature as the child of God, perfect, whole, pure. Christian Science teaches that the qualities of God belong naturally to man in the likeness of God. Therefore, patience, unselfishness, loving consideration for others, all these belong to the true identity of every one of us, to you and to me. And, you know, it's the understanding of this truth that helps us find the real basis for living, as Mary Baker Eddy points out in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." This is what she writes (p. 337), "For true happiness, man must harmonize with his Principle, divine Love."

But now, perhaps someone is thinking: "Well, theoretically all those qualities may belong to man in God's likeness, but how do you account for the fact that those nearest and dearest to us may sometimes seem to express just the opposite—for instance, self-will, deceit, dishonesty, impurity—right here in my home? Surely those qualities don't harmonize with divine Love."

No, of course they don't. But the very fact that we are believing that these qualities belong to others, and very often to ourselves too, indicates that we're accepting as true something God never made, therefore something which is no part of spiritual man.

However, what we've just said doesn't mean ignoring or excusing error in any way. On the contrary, the understanding of divine Love shows us how to correct such a situation. You see, as we establish in our thinking that man's true selfhood is spiritual, perfect, then self-will, deceit, dishonesty, and impurity are wiped out of our thinking and consequently are ruled out of our experience. This uplifting of our thought prepares us for the next step: the putting into everyday practice of the gentle, healing qualities of divine Love, the qualities of compassion, forgiveness, tenderness.

When our hearts overflow with unselfed love, we may be sure we are letting God, divine Love, govern our experience. The result, as with our guests, will inevitably be physical healing, more happiness in the home, more harmony in business, more usefulness in the community.

All that we've been saying can be summed up in these words of Mrs. Eddy from Science and Health (p. 518): "The rich in spirit help the poor in one grand brotherhood, all having the same Principle, or Father; and blessed is that man who seeth his brother's need and supplieth it, seeking his own in another's good."

The musical selection on the program was Hymn No. 423 from the Christian Science Hymnal (Give me, O Lord, an understanding heart).