Article August 3, 1935 Issue

"A conscious union with God"

SUSAN F. CAMPBELL

A Greatly loved hymn begins with this line: "Prayer is the heart's sincere desire." It is a thought worthy of every Christian's consideration, for what a man desires is a basic factor in his career. As desire becomes clarified, purified, and glorified, one yearns for more spirituality, and one's supreme aim is to know and do the will of God. True desire enters the realm of prayer.

The great objective of every student of Christian Science is accurate demonstration of the truth which he professes, and this comes through spiritualization of thought. In "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 42) Mrs. Eddy writes, "Science and Health clearly states that spiritualization of thought is not attained by the death of the body, but by a conscious union with God." Turning thought constantly and confidently to the source of all true being, and claiming an inseparable unity with good, aids greatly in gaining and maintaining a spiritual poise which cannot be disturbed.

Jesus must have been conscious of God's presence and power continuously as he went among his fellow men. He also took special times to be alone, for hours of conscious communion with God. His beautiful statements, which we find in the Gospels, are examples of how he prayed when with his disciples. But we do not know what glories unfolded to him during those silent nights alone with God. In Matthew's Gospel we read of his bidding his disciples get into a ship and leave him while he sen the multitudes away; and then "he went up into a mountain apart to pray: and when the evening was come, he was there alone." There is no record of his prayers in those hours, but we can eagerly study the outcome: "And in the fourth watch of the night Jesus went unto them, walking on the sea." What was it that gave Jesus this dominion, this unfaltering control over every obstruction that suggested itself? Surely it was his conscious union with God, which was tangible and demonstrable to him at all times. Mrs. Eddy has written in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 189), "The meek Nazarene's steadfast and true knowledge of preexistence, of the nature and the inseparability of God and man,—made him mighty."

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