Article June 1, 1929 Issue

Prayer

AMY FARISS

However dim may be the general realization of the fact, the power of true prayer is tremendous in steadying an unsettled world. The ceaseless misfortunes of the race show how uncertain blind faith has been in its results. But now Christian Science has ushered in spiritual understanding and the truth about unselfed love. In that inspiring sentence with which she opens the chapter on Prayer—the first chapter in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures"—our Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, irrevocably connects faith and understanding and love. She says (p. 1), "The prayer that reforms the sinner and heals the sick is an absolute faith that all things are possible to God,—a spiritual understanding of Him, an unselfed love."

"Lord, teach us to pray." This petition expressed the paramount need of Jesus' disciples; and it is the paramount need of humanity to-day. But mortal sense may ask, Where can I begin? I have prayed, begged, implored, but God does not appear to have heard me; I still suffer sickness, grief, and lack. The best way to begin to learn to pray aright, one may reply, to pray the prayer which brings response from the loving Father, is to strive to attain to "unselfed love."

Mortals are more or less wanderers in a wilderness, hungering for a greater measure of the Christ-spirit with which Jesus was so richly endowed. Few have yet been lifted to the sustained height where the false sense of self does not claim attention. But mortal opinions and ways are not what the world needs. It requires that "unselfed love" which understandingly aids those who may be in trouble; which reflects spiritual light wherewith to counteract the seeming evil—sin, sickness, death—appearing in human experience.

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