Article July 28, 1928 Issue

The Triple Call to Watchfulness and Prayer

ARTHUR R. VOSBURGH

Christian Scientists are familiar with the three sections of the Manual of The Mother Church (Art. VIII, Sects. 1, 4, and 6) which declare for them a daily duty of prayer and watchfulness along specific lines. The more one ponders the content, the form, and the order of statement of these three daily requirements, the more they are used and applied in consecrated daily devotion, the more their simple directness and comprehensive completeness of dealing with every phase and element of the human problem will be seen and felt.

The "Daily Prayer" (Art. VIII, Sect. 4) repeats, amplifies, and emphasizes the great petition from the Lord's Prayer which reaches out for the coming of God's kingdom. It calls us to recognize and remember that one's first need and duty is to get right himself, to come under the rule of divine law, and to be free from sin; and that following this must be the importunate desire that all mankind shall feel and know the inspiration and government of the divine Word.

In the degree that the petition for one's self finds its fulfillment in individual thought and consciousness, in that degree will one enter into the demonstration of the divine perfection. In the degree that the prayer for "all mankind" is fulfilled, in that degree will all the factors that enter into humanity's need be met; in that measure will all individual social, civic, national, and world problems be rightly grappled with and solved. The tremendous apparent needs of the world to-day, the call for cleaner politics, more honest government, more friendship among nations, more spiritualized standards of thinking and living everywhere, constitute a call and challenge to the Christian Scientist to remember that this "Daily Prayer" is a divinely prepared way for every follower of Christian Science to do his or her daily part in and toward the work that is to meet this clamorous need. It is heartening to remember that not only those in active public life may be helping to meet this need, but the humblest, the apparently weakest, those who for any cause are removed from human activities, may be taking a vitally effective part in all this work that is to usher in the kingdom.

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