Editorial January 12, 1935 Issue

Uniting in Prayer

W. Stuart Booth

Of profound significance is the invitation extended by First Readers to the members of the congregations in Christian Science churches and societies at the Sunday services and the Wednesday testimony meetings to unite in silent prayer. Although this may be taken merely as a call to those present to pray at the same time, it is much more far-reaching than that in its implication and influence. The power of united prayer has been proved repeatedly at business meetings of branch churches when a sense of confusion or contention has been engendered by a belief of fear, human will, pride, a false sense of personal responsibility, or carping criticism. At such times the mental atmosphere has been cleared of threatening storm clouds after some member has lovingly and humbly reminded the others that the prime purpose of church meetings is to demonstrate the oneness of Mind, and has requested that all turn from the problems to God, and truly unite in prayer.

Human theories, accepting material sense testimony, assume that men are matter-created and matter-constituted, and that there are as many minds as there are men. From this false assumption are evolved other errors, such as sensuality and selfishness, envy and fear, injustice and inequality, hostility and hatred, discord, and death. Religious and medical beliefs, together with economic and ethical theories, which start with the assumption that man is separate from God, infinite good, inevitably tend toward division and disruption instead of unity and peace. Errors in the conclusion naturally follow errors in the premise of human reasoning and endeavor.

Christ Jesus' understanding of God and man led him to deny and correct the belief that man is or can be separated from God, the Father. Evidently the Master recognized sin and sorrow, poverty and pain, disease and death, as expressions or indications of the basic error of disunity, for he not only declared the unity of man with God, good, but demonstrated it by healing or destroying the evidences of discord. Although Christ Jesus' statement, "I and my Father are one," is recorded but once in the Gospels, it is probable that he claimed this unity many, many times before the absolute demonstration of the fact was realized at the ascension. It is recorded in the seventeenth chapter of John's Gospel that after he had prayed that his disciples might likewise be at one with God, the Master continued thus: "Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; that they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us."

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