Christian Science on the Air

From 600 radio stations this week came a new kind of opening announcement. "The power of God," said a voice to a soft organ background, "is present and available today to heal you of sickness, sin, sorrow, and limitation . . . This program ... is another in the series on How Christian Science Heals, produced and transcribed by the Mother Church, the First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts."

The Scientists were on the air with a 15-minute weekly series, each to consist of a believer's own account of a real-life crisis, followed up with a vest-pocket sermon by Lecturer Harry C. Browne, president of the Mother Church in 1948 and onetime trouper with such greats as Lillian Russell and Irene Bordoni.

On the first program of the series, Shipyard Worker Roland Allen told how one day he was inside a ship's fuel tank, welding a lid, when he found that the lid's bolts, which he had tightened with his fingers because he had forgotten his wrench, would not come unscrewed, and he was trapped inside. "The first thought that came to me was the subject of the Lesson-Sermon to be read in all Christian Science churches the next day, 'God the Preserver of Man.' I kept this in mind and prayed as I had been taught.

"The suggestion came: 'You are alone. It is 4DEG above zero and Saturday noon. No help will come before Monday' . . . Fear swept over me ... I was trying to twist the bolts out with my fingers . . . Finally I realized I must stop these efforts and trust wholly in God ... I waited quietly, and it came to me, 'Take out the pin to the hinge.' The argument came, 'What good will that do, the bolts hold the lid.' But I followed the voice . . ."

After Allen was free, Spokesman Browne lost no time in making his point: "Perhaps you haven't realized that your bonds were self-imposed, and that with your own thinking you have forged the fetters that are binding you? But you have . . . Just as surely as the divine voice spoke to our friend in the tank of the ship and directed his release, so that divine voice speaks to you and me as we learn to understand God aright . . .

"Friends, it's worth trying, don't you think so?"

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