Article December 29, 1928 Issue

"Pendragon's" long letter in your last issue ends with...

Miss Kate E. Andreae, Committee on Publication for Sussex, England,—Eastbourne

Herald

"Pendragon's" long letter in your last issue ends with these words: "True prayer is to learn diligently the laws of life, and to obey them. We need to cultivate the thinking habit." Here he meets Christian Scientists on common ground, for to learn diligently the laws of Life is their highest aim and purpose. Prayer, to them, is the actual realization that God's laws exist, are ceaselessly operating, and are inviolable. No Christian Scientist argues "that God is an individual ready to adapt Himself to the convenience of everybody." Praying for something different to suit one's own interests is not the prayer of the Christian Scientist. Not from the standpoint of self-interest, but in contemplation of God's laws, order, and government already in operation for each and all alike, does the individual come into his own and receive whatever is necessary for his welfare. Christian Science teaches that when God is understood, His laws, already in existence and operating, will be revealed, His government recognized, and that this happy state of enlightenment will establish the kingdom of heaven on earth. It was Jesus' knowledge of God, and his grasp of the divine laws always in operation, which enabled him to heal the sick and sinful and raise the dead; and all who understand the grand import of his career, who recognize those same divine laws which he utilized, and which can operate in every age to heal and deliver, will find indeed that Christianity has not failed, and that Jesus' mission is triumphant. Individuals have failed in their application of Christianity, it is true,—have failed to understand the Master's words, works, and commands,—and its life-giving laws therefore have remained undiscovered, unused, and buried. But once having proved the power and possibilities which come with the awakening to, and understanding of, the laws of God, such a one will realize proportionately the triumph of Christianity, the success of Jesus' mission.

Further, Christian Scientists are not blind to realities. Realities to them are those things which, though they may be unseen to the material senses, are enduring, life-giving, and joy-inspiring. Reality to them is the recognition of God's eternal laws, in contradistinction to false, man-made laws, which destroy and alarm. Reality to them is the recognition of the great fact that God, eternal Mind, controls and governs the universe now and forever in perfect order and harmony. When a Christian Scientist has been able to banish, with his understanding of the eternal, ever operative laws of God, some severe affliction for another, perceiving that man is the image and likeness of God, he has touched reality, and demonstrated conclusively that those evils which seemed so solid and true were never any part of God's creation, never real, since the understanding of the ever-presence of God and of His Christ destroys them. On page xi of the Preface to "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mary Baker Eddy writes: "The physical healing of Christian Science results now, as in Jesus' time, from the operation of divine Principle, before which sin and disease lose their reality in human consciousness and disappear as naturally and as necessarily as darkness gives place to light and sin to reformation. Now, as then, these mighty works are not supernatural, but supremely natural. They are the sign of Immanuel, or 'God with us,'—a divine influence ever present in human consciousness and repeating itself, coming now as was promised aforetime,

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