Speaker: Healing and regeneration through prayer must always start with this all-important point—a clear understanding of God. For God is actually the only source of health, and it's through a spiritual understanding of Him that healing and harmony come about.

Our guest today found this to be true. It's a privilege to introduce Mrs. Vera M. Berg, of Stockholm, Sweden. Tell us your experience, if you will, Mrs. Berg.

Mrs. Berg: As a young girl, I didn't have much faith in God, because I didn't understand the Bible; and in college I lost the little faith I had, because the theology which was taught left me without anything to hold on to. I did, however, believe there was a power governing the universe, even if I didn't understand what it was.

As the years passed, I met with many difficulties, some of them physical, including rheumatism and neuralgia. A severe migraine condition also used to incapacitate me for days at a time. I had begun to wonder if life was really worth living.

Then came the turning point. I shall never forget the remarkable evening when my mother asked me to go with her to a Christian Science lecture in Stockholm, Sweden. I left the lecture hall that evening a new person; I felt that at last I had found the way of Life and a reason for living.

You see, the lecturer presented so clearly the unswerving logic of Christian Science that I realized that here was a teaching I could understand. Here was a God who does not change from one moment to the next, but, rather, is the unchanging divine Principle of the whole universe, a God who is divine Love and does not send terrible things to His children.

The next day I borrowed a copy of the Christian Science textbook from the friend who had first given it to my mother, and here in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy I found the explanation which opened up the Bible for me. I just drank in the truths contained in these two books, and about three months later I suddenly realized that I was free from these physical troubles, and they never occurred again.

I have had many other physical healings and through the help of Christian Science have come through great financial difficulties. You see, my husband had started a business of his own, and it had to go through two periods of great world depression. I clung, however, consistently to the thought of God as divine Principle, as the source and origin of all that really exists. I knew that whatever is anchored in Principle is upheld and maintained, supported, supplied, and guided by Principle.

I knew that all true business is a means of expressing God's qualities, and I was greatly sustained by the statement in Science and Health (p. 494), "Divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need." And each time, our needs were met, sometimes in quite unexpected ways. Gradually the firm became a well-established and successful one.

More important, Christian Science has shown me the reason for my existence. In the words of Isaiah, "Ye are my witnesses, saith the Lord, that I am God." In other words, man's high goal is to bear witness to God's nature, to His love. Frankly speaking, I never understood either God or the Bible until that wonderful evening when I attended my first Christian Science lecture. Since then I have been grateful that more of the light of spiritual understanding has continued to illumine my experience.

I can hardly express in words how much my joy and gratitude have grown since I've come to recognize and appreciate the spiritual facts of existence, as I've learned them through Christian Science. I have found a life filled with happy and satisfying activity and with the joy of serving others. Christian Science has opened up for me opportunities and rich experiences that I had never any idea of before.

Speaker: Thank you for sharing those thoughts with us, Mrs. Berg. It was good to have a visitor from Sweden on our program today.

Friends, our guest said that the turning point in her life came when she attended a Christian Science lecture, because it was at this lecture that Mrs. Berg began to understand something of the true nature of God. She got a deeper, a more satisfying view of Him. As she herself said, "Here was a God who does not change from one moment to the next, but, rather, is the unchanging divine Principle of the whole universe, a God who is divine Love and does not send terrible things to His children."

From that time on, her life began to improve, and she found a real reason for existing. This is the natural result of an enlightened understanding of God. Everyone certainly yearns to know the real reason for his existence and to have an opportunity to be of genuine service to his fellow men. The answer lies in his gaining a deeper understanding of the nature of God.

Christian Scientists find inspiration and practical help in learning to know God. Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, spent years searching the Scriptures in a great desire to know more of God. She went through much suffering and privation until her study of the Bible brought her healing and freedom. She found in the Bible that God is referred to as Life, Truth, Love, and Spirit. Further study and prayer showed that passages in the Scriptures clearly imply that God is immortal Soul, infinite Mind, and divine Principle.

A deeper understanding of God removes the fears and doubts which we may have entertained concerning Him. For example, when God is understood as divine Principle, Love, it becomes clear that He is the very source of all good and that He sends only good to His children. We see that God governs all in perfect order and harmony. The understanding that God is divine Spirit makes plain that God is everywhere, that His creation is not material but spiritual and therefore not subject to inharmony.

This broader view of God necessarily results in a clearer understanding of the true nature of man. Man is seen not as a hopeless mortal, subject to chance and danger, but as the beloved spiritual likeness of God. And so man's reason for existence is to express God, to bear witness to all that God is. Man is eternally cared for by God, because God is Love. And man is forever guided and directed by God, because God is divine Mind.

The understanding of the tender relationship of God and man is of immediate practical help in human affairs. Disease or discord does not come from God. It is the result of a misunderstanding of God and His perfect creation, the result of a mistaken view which a correct understanding wipes out and replaces with harmony. To the degree that one's thinking is filled with the true understanding of God and man, one's every day affairs become more and more harmonious and fruitful. And the results are greater peace, joy, and usefulness. It's the realization of God's goodness and of the ever-presence of God's power that brings healing.

The points we've been discussing are summarized very helpfully in a passage from Science and Health. Mrs. Eddy writes (p. 390), "It is our ignorance of God, the divine Principle, which produces apparent discord, and the right understanding of Him restores harmony."

The musical selection on the program was Hymn No. 186 from the Christian Science Hymnal (Mighty God, the First, the Last).