Article August 9, 1913 Issue

ACTIVITIES OF PRAYER

HON. CLARENCE A. BUSKIRK.

Prayer may sometimes be scoffed at as superstitious folly, but it is loved by sorrow and affliction, and revered by ripened wisdom. It is the effort of the spiritual element in human consciousness to attain a closer acquaintance with the divine source of all true being. What is humanly unworthy may at times enter into the motive, inception, and methods of prayer, but it is always supremely divine in what it accomplishes; for what is true in prayer is sure of its affirmative answer, while all that is untrue is sure of no response. Many human aspirations are like the moth that supposes it is soaring to a star but falls scorched beside a lamp. The right answer to the right prayer is a proven sure result of the infinite and eternal activities of divine Principle in the relations of man to the universe in which he is placed. It is dynamic and kinetic; to the kingdom of God within us it is like the sunlight to the beauty and fragrance of the unfolding blossom.

"Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them." This inspiring promise of Jesus is neither disproved nor limited because many supposed prayers receive no answer. A prayer is answered or not answered, according to the view-point of Truth, not according to the view-point of him who prays. We desire and ask aright from our view-point only as it harmonizes with the view-point of divine Principle.

It ought to be clear to every one that the prayer to which Jesus refers, as sure of an affirmative answer, is the ideal prayer, with no admixture of error. If we can know what constitutes such ideal or absolutely true and perfect prayer, and can attain its pure and impeccable height when we pray, then the foregoing promise of Jesus is entirely trustworthy. The true God must be prayed to. It is indeed well for us that the kind of supreme being in whom many believe, and to whom they pray, has no existence. It would, for example, be much the safer for us to keep as far away as possible from that conjectured deity who is sometimes declared to be the author of laws of sickness and other aspects of human error. To pray for deliverance from such discords while believing that they are dispensations of divine Providence, is not only a vain but a dangerous thing to do; for it serves to bring our most potential consciousness into communion with a baseless untruth,—a belief which may be humanly causative of sickness, etc.

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