SPEAKER: In many ways this is a skeptical age we're living in. And so today many people yearn for proof which will justify their faith in God. Indeed, some seem to have lost the faith they've been taught. We have with us a man who does have strong faith in God. And we're going to ask him why. He's Norman Fordyce, of Woodhaven, Long Island, New York.

What's your answer, Mr. Fordyce?

MR. FORDYCE: Well, I'm probably a good one to ask that question because I was trained as an engineer, and I've always been used to thinking things through logically. Many times when I was alone I'd get down on my knees and say the Lord's Prayer. I'd never really understood it, but I felt there was something there that helped. But I wasn't sure why, and I didn't get answers to my questions about God.

SPEAKER: Evidently you found an answer. How did it come to you?

MR. FORDYCE: Well, to give you the background: I was in England during World War II, working at Chatham Naval Base. We were under constant bombardment, and there was destruction all around. The whole situation seemed so utterly futile that I didn't really care whether the next bomb hit me or not; I'd got to the place where it didn't really matter. And it was at that point that I found my answer.

I saw an advertisement one evening for the local Christian Science Reading Room. I'd never heard of it before, but those two words "Christian Science" seemed to mean something to me. So I decided to get a copy of the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy.

I read the book at every possible opportunity. It gave me a sense of light. I began to see that God could be understood, not just believed in. But still I was very cynical. I wanted proof.

Then three things happened: Sometime previously I'd had two fingers badly injured under a magnetic steel chuck which weighed about 112 pounds. Blood poisoning had set in, and the doctor said he'd have to amputate; but I refused. The fingers were lanced and finally healed, but one was left completely rigid and the other twisted and discolored.

However, a few weeks after I began reading Science and Health, I suddenly found I was using the fingers naturally. And when I looked at them they were completely normal. I remember asking a Christian Scientist about it. He said: "That's a perfect Christian Science healing. You're seeking and working to understand God, and these things happen."

Then one day working in the shipyard I stepped onto a metal platform between two stacks of submarine torpedo tubes. It was about eight feet above the steel floor. Somehow the platform wasn't bolted, and it gave way. The space between the two stacks was so narrow you couldn't even turn around in it. And there were all sorts of pieces of metal, bolts and flanges, sticking out on either side.

I had just picked up a forty-pound piece of equipment when it happened, and instantly I realized how helpless I was. In that split second I remember thinking, "What can Christian Science do for me now?" And just as strongly the answer came, "Let divine Love." In other words, I became completely aware of God's perfect control. And even though I fell the eight feet through this narrow passageway, where all these sharp things were sticking out, there was no injury of any kind.

The naval surgeon insisted on my being taken to the hospital for a thorough checkup, but I was perfectly all right. I'd like to emphasize that I know this wasn't just a piece of good luck, something that might have happened anyway. To me it was a proof of God's presence and power.

Now the third proof I mentioned was of a somewhat different character. I'd contracted a malarial infection in India several years before, and in the winter months I was having recurring attacks of this. My flesh was badly discolored. But soon after I began studying Christian Science, that also was completely and permanently healed.

So you can see from these three actual experiences, and I've had others too, why I have faith in God. I know that His power is ever present and instantly available. Christian Science has made this so clear to me. That's what appealed to me about this religion. It gave me a new concept of God, a concept I could understand. For instance, I'd believed that God's will could be both good and evil and that wars and disasters were God's will. But these beliefs were ruled out of my thinking as I learned that God is divine Love, ever-present good, the supreme power.

Another thing that appealed to me was that Christian Science uses the term divine Principle as a synonym for God. Now in my engineering experience I knew that when the rules or principles of mathematics are understood and adhered to, they work. And I began to see that if you really worked to understand God, you could get to know Him as divine Principle, and this understanding would be practical in daily living.

SPEAKER: In other words, it was this understanding of God that supplied the basis for your faith.

MR. FORDYCE: That's exactly what I came to realize, and why I'm so grateful.

SPEAKER: And we're grateful to you. Mr. Fordyce, for telling how you reached these conclusions.

Friends, when faith is built on the spiritual understanding of God, it opens the way to healing, as Christian Science explains. Our guest found this true in his experience. It is spiritual understanding that strengthens faith.

The Master, Christ Jesus, often indicated the need for strengthening faith. On one occasion when he had healed a boy whom his disciples had been unable to cure, they asked him the reason for their failure. Jesus replied, "Because of your unbelief." He went on to say that if they had faith as a grain of mustard seed, they could remove mountains. Then he made this significant remark: "Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting."

Surely his reply indicates more than a blind faith or belief in God. Prayer and fasting as Jesus taught call for complete reliance on God, infinite, ever-present Spirit, and a consequent refusal to trust in material ways and means.

From his perfect understanding of God, Jesus revealed the infinite goodness, the all-power, and wisdom of God, and he taught his followers to recognize their true identity as the beloved sons of God.

The spiritual understanding of God reveals the ever-presence of the healing Christ, Truth, which Jesus manifested so fully. Faith that becomes spiritual understanding is not subject to fear, discouragement, or fluctuation. When it is maintained, it becomes divinely effective, as our guest discovered.

Whether the challenge is a physical problem, the need for protection or for adjustment in our human affairs, the steps we need to take are revealed by absolute faith, or spiritual understanding. Mrs. Eddy explains in Science and Health (p. 1), "The prayer that reforms the sinner and heals the sick is an absolute faith that all things are possible to God,—a spiritual understanding of Him, an unselfed love."

The musical selection on the program was Hymn No. 115 from the Christian Science Hymnal (Holy Father, Thou hast taught us).