Editorial November 26, 1927 Issue

Effectual Prayer

Duncan Sinclair

Effectual prayer! Is there such a thing? Many a one has asked the question. The Founder of the Christian religion did not doubt that there was; for prayer was the means whereby he invoked the power of God, and utilized that power in performing all the wonderful deeds which characterized his ministry. Without prayer Christ Jesus could have healed no sick person, brought about the regeneration of no sinful person, raised no one from the dead, set at naught none of the so-called laws of matter. With it his thought became so attuned to divine Truth, so much in accord with divine Principle, so harmoniously governed by divine Love, that he proved himself to be the greatest demonstrator of spiritual law the world has ever seen.

Jesus taught his disciples how to pray and the value of prayer. The Lord's Prayer will ever remain in the hearts of men as the ideal prayer, which, if spiritually understood, will enable them to heal all manner of sickness. James, who followed closely in the Master's footsteps, speak emphatically in his epistle of the value of prayer, stating that "the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much." And all through Christian history prayer has been "the Christian's vital breath," even when its method has been but imperfectly understood. Men may not have had even the faintest notion as to how it operates, and yet they have prayed. Time and agian they have used it in direst extremity, as a last appeal to a power almost, if not altogether, undefined to them. And wonderful to say, that appeal, that prayer, may have delivered them from the danger which confronted them.

Now prayer, enlightened prayer, is a very definite thing—Christian Science makes that clear; and the one who prays the prayer which heals and blesses must have an understanding of God and His creation which is scientific. This understanding Christian Science gives. Prayer seems to fail because this scientific spiritual understanding is absent. What is this understanding? It is that God is infinite and perfect Spirit, and that His creation is spiritual and perfect. The great spiritual truth that God and His manifestation alone exist as reality strikes at the belief that there is a real material creation; indeed, spiritual understanding shows that spiritual existence alone is real, that it is perfectly harmonious, and that the so-called material creation, with which is associated inharmony in all its forms, is unreal.

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