Article January 30, 1915 Issue

Desire

GUSTAVUS S. PAINE, PH.M.

Many a one who has turned to Christian Science has felt an instinctive satisfaction, a joyful sense of the reasonable of Mrs. Eddy's statements, upon reading the very first page of the chapter on Prayer in the text-book, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." As we read the words "Desire is prayer," we straightway rejoice in the simplicity of this fact, the simplicity of the fundamental requirement of Science. Perhaps all we have been able to do at this point has been to turn in seeming hopelessness; but here is something with a message for us,—"Desire is prayer,"—even though we have been praying without knowing how or why!

As one studies Christian Science more deeply, however, he asks himself, Why is it that "desire is prayer"? and sooner or later he reasons out the answer. Prayer is a turning to God, and unsatisfied desire is a sense of incompleteness. Mortal thought is ever incomplete, lacking enough to satisfy itself; and whenever it turns away from its seeming self at all, it must turn toward all there really is, God and His image and likeness. God is Love, and He is also intelligence, the infinite consciousness which is all we can prove truly to exist. This All-intelligence, constantly active and unfolding to us its limitlessness, is the one perfect whole which satisfies completely. Whenever the mortal sense of incompleteness turns away from self at all, it necessarily loses the sense of self and disappears in the presence of the completeness of God, good. Thus in studying Christian Science, the work of human sense, with all its seeming limitations, is just to strive to turn wholly toward loving intelligence and to lose self in the actuality of intelligent activity.

Could anything be simpler than Mrs. Eddy's statement that "desire is prayer," and yet could any statement be more pregnant with meaning? The desire for healing is merely the desire for the wholeness of right and normal activity, since disease is always a belief in either underactivity or overactivity. The desire for abundance is again only a turning toward the completeness which alone is plenty, and is to be found in the consciousness of good. The desire for the overcoming of sin is desire for the true satisfaction which is realized in the complete control that intelligence has over its infinite expression. Every one of these desires or prayers is fulfilled in human experience in proportion as one understands and applies Christian Science, which is indeed the expression of good for the benefit of all mankind. "But to understand God," Mrs. Eddy admonishes us, with her ever keen insight into the very heart of things (Science and Health, p. 3), "is the work of eternity, and demands absolute consecration of thought, energy, and desire."

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