SPEAKER: This is an age in which frontiers of physical science are moving outward into vast new realms, breaking through the obstacles, time and space, bringing freedom from age-old limitations. But beyond these explorations lies a question men have wrestled with for centuries, the question of whether or not there is a God.

Our guest today is a man who faced this question. The story of his search is for all those who have known the frustrations of materialism and have a deep yearning to find the real answer.

Friends, I'd like to introduce Cleo Lawrence, of Rome, New York.

MR. LAWRENCE: For many years I didn't think there was any explanation of God; at least, none I could believe in. It was my deep conviction that if there was a God, He had made a real mess of creation and left man ill-equipped to put things right. I'd been affiliated with two or three faiths at different times, but being dissatisfied I began a study of the philosophies. But that didn't satisfy me either. I was impressed by the rigorous standard of logic I encountered, but there was no reason to accept the conclusions of these philosophies as being any more valid than the assumptions. And the assumptions about God if nothing else, seemed a bit confused. At the same time. I wondered why Christianity, as I knew it then, wasn't explained with the same faultless quality of reasoning. I became an atheist. So for ten years I studied and thought in that direction. This brings me up to the time when I began to study Christian Science.

My wife had always been a Scientist. I'd always argued with her about it. But I saw several good healings through Christian Science, right in my own family and I had to admit there was something there, something I needed very much. So finally I set myself seriously to the task of trying to understand Christian Science.

It proved to be quite a struggle. To me matter was the substance and basis of all life. It seemed much more real to me than God about whom I knew little or nothing.

I remember one day, while driving a farm tractor, I was thinking about a statement in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." where Mary Baker Eddy writes on page 468: "There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter. All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all." This seemed impossible to accept, when the sun was blazing down, the transmission case was burning my feet, a choking dust was boiling up from the plows, and the exhaust was roaring in my ears.

Then there was another thing that struck me as utterly impossible: the bible statement that man is made in the image and likeness of God. How in the name of logic, I wondered, could each individual in the diverse multitude of humanity be the image and likeness of the one God alone?

It was soon after this that I had a healing myself through Christian Science treatment. That's when my thinking began to change completely.

As a young lad, I'd fallen about twenty feet from a tree and injured some of the vertebrae in my back. I'd had trouble with it ever since, including extreme pain.

One day I was driving a heavily loaded truck, and the pain became so bad I had to ease the truck to the side of the road and stop. Alter some time I managed to get home and to bed. Then I agreed that my wife should call a Christian Science practitioner.

The practitioner came to the house. One thing he stressed to me was how very much God loved me. He spoke with such deep conviction that for the first time I found myself really believing this was at least a possibility. About the second or third day I became conscious of a wonderful inward glow of light and love. I knew right then I was healed! My thought was finally opening up to the real meaning of God as divine Love. And this has proved to be a permanent healing.

Actually, though, the physical healing wasn't the most important part of it. The really important thing was this: I now was satisfied that there is a God, a very loving God, and that I could turn to Him again and again, in perfect trust, no matter what the problem might be.

I had to move my thinking over into an area where I could recognize God, divine Mind, as the starting point. I had to see that Spirit. God, is All completely supreme, as Christian Science teaches: therefore that matter is an illusion, or false concept and is actually unreal. Steeped in materialism as I was, this was a long distance to travel.

Eventually I realized that to accept matter into our consciousness as real is to surrender our thinking to material limitations, impositions, and laws.

On the other hand, I saw that when we accept the real import of God as infinite Spirit or Mind, we see that all the intelligence and reality there is, is in and of God and is spiritual. And I could see it follows that if man is made in the likeness of God, as the Bible says, then he can only express divine intelligence and wisdom, in fact all the spiritual qualities of God. In other words, the image of God must be a spiritual idea and not a mortal material being.

SPEAKER: I'm sure this was giving you quite a new concept, a new understanding of man's relationship to God.

MR. LAWRENCE: Yes, it was, and it made it clear to me that nothing can happen to man that doesn't first happen to God. This applies to poverty as precisely as it applies to measles. If God doesn't have it, man can't experience it, because man is made in God's likeness.

SPEAKER: Now, that's a very interesting conclusion, Mr. Lawrence. I wonder if you can tell us how you've found it practical in your life since then.

MR. LAWRENCE: There isn't a part of my life that hasn't been blessed. The pessimism and confusion have disappeared. I was led into a more useful and interesting career. I've had physical healings and protection many times.

Above all, I am grateful to have found a completely satisfying answer to my search for God.

SPEAKER: It's obvious you gained a happier life, Mr. Lawrence— richer and more satisfying. And it came to you when you began to know what God really is. You know, your experience brings to mind the promise of the Master, "This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent."

Friends, the experience our guest has told us points to this fact: There is a God. This God is Truth and Love, all-powerful, ever-present good. And you know. He tenderly cares for all His children. We can know Him; we can depend on Him: we can experience the redeeming influence of His unfailling goodness.

In concluding our discussion today, there's a passage I'd like to read you from the Preface of Science and Health. Here's what it says (p vii): "Truth, independent of doctrines and time-honored systems, knocks at the portal of humanity. Contentment with the past and the cold conventionality of materialism are crumbling away. Ignorance of God is no longer the stepping-stone to faith. The only guarantee of obedience is a right apprehension of Him whom to know aright is Life eternal."