Editorial June 4, 1921 Issue

With Cleanness of Heart

Gustavus S. Paine

WHAT a man rightly desires above all else, that he must work for until he proves that it is his. If, then, one has not seemed to find all the healing he had hoped for through Christian Science, his need is to set to work more than ever with the real spirit of prayer that shows itself in sincere desire and steadfast right living. Even when a man says to others that he does not see why he has not yet been healed, because he has done his best in Christian Science and is guilty of no serious faults, he knows within his heart that he could do still better if he were really to practice being perfect, even as the Father which is in heaven is perfect. Each one must be fully honest with himself in order to prove the fullness of healing in Christian Science. As Mrs. Eddy says on page 8 of Science and Health, "We confess to having a very wicked heart and ask that it may be laid bare before us, but do we not already know more of this heart than we are willing to have our neighbor see?"

"Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me," is the sincere prayer of many a man or woman who seems bound and depressed by some belief in matter. The very asking thus for cleanness of purpose and effort must be, at the same time, in order to succeed, a humble knowing that there is the one supreme Mind at hand to rely on. In Christian Science the student must seek simply the source of all real good, whether to himself he phrases the turning to God in the form of a prayer of asking or a prayer of knowing. The prayer of asking may well be a start, for it may be the only way of seeking that the troubled one is aware of. Yet he who asks rightly always receives rightly, and proceeds to find out how to know the truth with perfect sureness, for the sincere desire for the cleanness which is wholeness of Spirit, not matter, is what counts. A man could not even really ask goodness of God without knowing in some measure that there is indeed God to ask it of, and the instant one accepts this basic fact, and to the extent that he accepts it, he finds the goodness of the divine Mind and its idea taking the place of the evil of human beliefs.

A prayer of the Navajo Indians that has lately been published phrases something of the same sincere desire that we find expressed in the Psalms. "Lord of the Mountain," it begins, and then goes on,

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