Article September 1, 1917 Issue

Prayer of Absorbing Desire

FRANK BUNKER

To many persons the reading of that wonderful first chapter of Science and Health, and particularly Mrs. Eddy's statement that "desire is prayer" (p. 1), has given the first inkling that prayer means something more than an attempt to communicate with God in a more or less formal way. The verses which the little child repeats at its mother's knee; the invocation pronounced by the preacher early in the church service ; the sonorous, dignified, and majestic prayers of ritualistic religion; and the beautifully worded outpourings of the human heart, which have come down to us as a part of the world's great literature,—these are the types of prayer with which in varying degree all are familiar, and it is these which are commonly connoted when the term is used.

With that illuminating spiritual insight which earnest students of Mrs. Eddy's writings increasingly recognize to be characteristic of her, she perceived that prayer in its fuller and more complete meaning comprehends as well that craving of the human heart which lies too deep for the spoken word ; that innermost and absorbing desire which is the basis of character, the mainspring of conduct, the driving power of men's lives.

The words which we utter may spring from our lips only. Expediency may dictate them, or the desire to do what is expected of us, or the thought of what others may think or say. Words may be used to disguise and obscure our thought as well as to project it and make it transparent. Words in and of themselves are an airy, nimble, and often irresponsible troop, quickly adapting themselves to every change in our mood and purpose. Our desires, on the other hand, are not so completely the servants of our wills, for they spring unbidden from our deepest emotions. They admit of no easy disguise, of no quick shift to meet a changing situation, of no lightning play of feint and guard and thrust as in a fencing contest. Since our conduct is so much more closely related to our desires than to our words, it has come about that the world in taking its measure of a man has learned to examine his deeds rather than his speech. It has found out that a man's determining and directing desire can be better come at through the channel of his actions than through that of his utterance.

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