Editorial September 24, 1910 Issue

"WHEN THOU PRAYEST."

John B. Willis

It is not surprising, perhaps, that the novice in Christian Science should find himself somewhat confused as to the proper function and form of prayer. Having been awakened to a sense of the incongruity and unfitness of much that he has identified with it in the past, the needlessness of appealing to God that He consent to do the things that He must of necessity do in keeping with His unchanging nature, and not having learned as yet the more excellent way, he feels very much at sea and hardly knows what to do. If, in such an hour, he carefully and receptively reads the chapter on Prayer in the Christian Science text-book, it will bring him a sense of comfort and illumination which will constitute the first "new day," in that more satisfying and more effective religious life upon which he is just entering.

Like every other phase of its teaching, the Christian Science thought of prayer is directly related to the thought of God. Its prime essential is a childlike and unfaltering trust in the goodness and beneficence of the All-Father. Its forms and expressions may be many, they may vary with the aspects of human temperament and need, as well as with one's advance in spirituality, or they may pass altogether; but this heart of longing-love must beat on, forever and for all the same, in the bosom of those who truly pray. If its rhythm is constant and steady, its knock will be sufficient, and the door will be opened.

In Christian Science one comes to understand that prayer is an attitude rather than an act. It is the restful recognition of the inviolability of the law of Love. God is no longer thought of as capable of setting aside divine law in response to the appeal of "some peculiarly persuasive pleader," as one has said, but as that eternal Principle of being into harmony with whose forever-right activities we may all come for the healing of our every ill, through spiritual illumination, the appearing of the Christ. Mrs. Eddy has illustrated this in her reference to the pupil's mental pose toward a mathematical law or rule, the full apprehension and application of which will, as he well knows, give him perfect command of his problem, however involved it may be. He may or may not speedily reach the hoped-for solution, but if he temporarily fails he knows just why, and his faith in the rightness and adequacy of the law remains quite undisturbed.

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