Well, just think, that sitting down probably without even one statement of truth and waiting for the very first statement of truth to be given to us, we could do it that way. We could sit down if we’re going to do healing work and say, “Father, I don’t know any truth, and if I did it wouldn’t make any difference because scripture says, “His understanding is infinite.” Doesn’t say anything about mine and it doesn’t say anything about my understanding counting. It says, “His understanding is infinite.” It says, “He uttered His voice, and the earth melted.” So, Father, I guess I won’t give any treatment. I’ll sit here and let You utter Your voice or You tell me. I’ll be the state of receptivity. And you see, a truth would reveal itself through us that could perform miracles on earth. We couldn’t perform the miracles, you or I couldn’t. But a truth could come through our consciousness if we were that humble that we put our own understanding aside for God’s understanding. A truth could come through that would raise the dead.

That’s why I say to you that if you knew one statement of truth, and I’ll go still further—if you didn’t know any statement of truth, you still can heal. If you’re willing to be quiet enough, silent enough, receptive enough until He uttereth His voice through you; until some word of Truth comes through, then you’ll find that the word of God is quick and sharp and powerful—the word of God, not the word that you remember or quote or affirm, nor I, but the word of God.

Now, you see why I can’t say this to a great big lecture audience? They wouldn’t know what I’m talking about and a lot of people, even in a class won’t. But those of you who have read the books conscientiously, heard the tapes, you know what I’m talking about. You know right well, there isn’t anyone in this room who shouldn’t be ready to accept the responsibility to start healing work and start it right away. And, because it isn’t your spirituality or mine that’s going to heal anybody and it isn’t your understanding or mine that’s going to heal anybody, it’s God’s understanding to which we make ourselves receptive by getting still and saying, “Speak Lord, thy servant heareth,” or “I will listen for Thy voice”—any of those things that make us receptive to the voice.

Then, as these truths begin to work in our consciousness, we’ll find that they’re working in the consciousness of our patients and our students and of the world at large. That’s the great benefit—that they operate for the benefit of the world at large. You cannot imagine how many times I’ve seen in capital-labor relations, in government relations even in international relations, what prayer can do.

I violated a very, very strict law in England on my last trip. A friend in Germany was in some difficulty and I took a bill out of my pocket, an American bill, and put it in an envelope and mailed it to Germany with a letter saying, “Here’s some temporary help.” And the Post Office caught the letter, and confiscated the money because it is not permissible to send currency out of England. As a matter of fact, it isn’t permissible to send it out of any of the countries that have restricted currency. And I don’t have to tell you that I wasn’t thinking of violating the law, I was thinking of blessing somebody in a temporary moment.

So I received a letter from the British government telling me I had violated the law, my money was confiscated, but if I did want to answer and say anything that I could write a letter to the Postmaster, department so and so. So I did. And I said, “If you opened the letter and found the money then you’ve also the opportunity of reading the letter. And you will see that I was answering the call of somebody in distress. What you might call, if you like, an act of mercy.”

Now, the British government is built on the Bible. It has a state church, The Church of England. It cannot open sessions of its Parliament without an official bishop being there to officiate. So I said that your government is founded on the Bible, on the teachings of Jesus Christ and more especially on love, mercy, helpfulness, doing unto others where others do unto us; doing unto the least of these my brethren as done unto me. And I can’t imagine that the Parliament of England would really pass a law nullifying a law of Jesus Christ. And they sent my money back.

And so it found its way into Germany in a different way. I could legally go and get a check in the bank, which I did. So you see the point is, you can even violate a law sometime, can’t you, if it’s accompanied with love, with prayer, with understanding.

Now, all those things can happen through prayer. Governments can change their rulings; different people can be elected to office than would have been elected by purely human means, natures, dispositions can change; international affairs can be influenced. Nobody can ever know to what degree international affairs between England and Russia can be influenced by scientists going back and forth and giving their secrets, their papers, their discoveries to each other and finding in each other the good will. You never know how far reaching those things are because I’m sure that in Russia, it went right up to the heads of the government that they were invited to England and their expenses were being paid. Do you see that?

All right now, surely there isn’t a single one of us that couldn’t do any of those things, if we understood just enough to know that we understand nothing. But that if we’re silent enough that God will give us the particular truth, the particular wisdom for the occasion and with it will come the power—because the word of God is quick and sharp and powerful—see that?

Now, we in The Infinite Way have been too slow in approaching this healing work. We are ten years in existence as a teaching—that is it will be ten years next June. And just on the strength of the truth that’s in the books this work has spread to the entire Protestant world. There are American editions, there are British editions, Dutch, German, Danish, Afrikaans, Swedish, and there are people trying to translate into French and Spanish and Portuguese. All that on its own volition, on the word within itself.

And yet, we really haven’t enough healers, practitioners, so that if I accepted the invitations that come to go on the air, we wouldn’t be able to do the healing work. We haven’t enough people to do it. In other words, we have to intentionally keep our work from being too well known because we’d have too many requests for help and we haven’t the workers to take care of them. And that isn’t right. That isn’t right. This work of The Infinite Way is ready to, like spring, it’s ready to bust out all over. But it can’t be allowed to because what would happen if the world did say, “Oh, let’s have some of it.” Then I would have to say “I’m snowed under, and I haven’t got enough people to help.” And yet, I know that there isn’t anybody who has attended our tape groups regularly, whether here or Los Angeles or Washington or New York, there isn’t anybody that’s attended for any length of time who can’t do just as good a healing work as any practitioner on the globe. Because it isn’t up to them, it isn’t whether they’re young or old. It isn’t up to them whether they speak English or not. It’s merely up to whether they’re willing to sit down quietly and forget their own body or their own purse or their own family trouble and get busy with the world and let their own affairs take care of themselves.

The Bible does say that I’ve never seen the righteous begging bread and I think it’s true that as we would get into this work, whether or not we had great prosperity at once or not, doesn’t make a difference, we’ll get our two or three meals a day and a place to sleep and that’s all that’s necessary because the rest will come of its own accord and in its own time in proportion as we learn to die to ourselves. Give up your own life that another may live. Give up your own comfort that another may have comfort. Give up your own time that another may get a healing. And then you’ll find that in losing your own life you’ll find that you’ve gained God’s life which is life eternal. Now just remember that: “Whom to know aright is life eternal,”—to know God aright.

Every time you sit down to meditate on a passage of Scripture, you are contemplating God and you are getting that much closer to knowing God aright. That is how I made the discovery that the greatest need in anyone’s life is to know the nature of God. The world doesn’t know the nature of God. All that stuff they are taught about God being a God of vengeance or a God of revenge or punishment or God this, this against you—that’s a lot of nonsense and is just hogwash! That is not God’s nature at all.