Editorial September 25, 1909 Issue

EFFECTUAL PRAYER

Annie M. Knott

IT is sometimes asked whether prayer is of any avail to mankind in their struggles to overcome the besetments of evil. To this it may be replied that prayer is one of the necessities of our being, as all discover sooner or later. We may pray well or pray ill, but pray we must, for existence without some attempt to reach up to God is unthinkable. All prayer is necessarily dependent upon the petitioner's concept of God—indeed the petitioner himself is framed after this concept. The one who fails to understand the omnipotence of God, as good, has in belief another power, namely, evil, and his prayers inevitably make provision for this belief and express this concept. Failing to see that God is all wise, mortals proceed to inform Him of their struggles with this supposititious power which seems to make inroads upon their harmony, possibly in the form of disease or some other person's wrong-doing; then, when their prayers are not answered in the way they expect, they are apt to lose faith in prayer,if not in God.

The Bible is full of records of prayer, some of which are wonderfully illustrative of the spiritually scientific sense of being. In the fourth chapter of Genesis we find this significant statement: "Then began men to call upon the name of the Lord," and we are told that as a result of this calling upon God, Enoch "walked with God," and that he did not see death. In Hebrews we read that "before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God." This surely points to the wonderful results which follow true prayer, or communion with God.

It is worthy of notice that in many of these records of communion with the divine Mind, the emphasis is laid upon what God says, not upon what man tells God; as, for instance, where God said to Jacob, when he was a lonely wanderer, and when the ladder was let down from heaven, "Behold, I am with thee, and will keep thee in all places whither thou goest, . . . I will not leave thee." This recalls the lines in Mrs. Eddy's beautiful hymn,—

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