Article February 23, 1918 Issue

Daily Prayer

BURTON H. WADE

The beginner in Christian Science, having been healed of some dread disease, or lifted out of the depths of despair through the application of the healing Word, usually finds himself inquiring as to the cause of his changed condition. He may have some difficulty in understanding at once that this has been brought about through prayer, since all his life, perhaps, he himself may have been praying for divine aid, but without avail, so far as present conditions are concerned. Would it not appear, then, that it is the misconception of mortals as to what God is that stands in the way or hinders the answer to prayer?

All Christendom believes that a supreme power—a first cause—governs the universe, and it quite agrees in calling this supreme power, or cause, God. There is therefore partical unanimity in the belief that God is, but when we come to inquire as to what God is, we find a wide difference of opinion. For ages there has prevailed in the minds of mortals a belief that God is a corporeal being, possessing a capacity for anger, revenge, and destruction, one who answers or ignores the petitions of mortals somewhat as a human father might grant or refuse the request of a child. Yet all the world believes in prayer of some kind, and also believes that some prayers are answered.

Daily prayer is daily food to the heart hungering and thirsting after righteousness, and such prayer has sustained man throughout all time, but petitions addressed to an unknown God are hardly conducive to the apprehension of a supreme confidence that prayer is heard or answered. Jesus taught his disciples how to pray, and he taught them one prayer. "But thou, when thou prayest," he said, "enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly." Mrs. Eddy says on page 14 of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," "The Lord's Prayer is the prayer of Soul, not of material sense."

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