Article August 7, 1943 Issue

"Allied to the deific power"

EDITH PRUDDEN

"Teach us to pray." That prayer is in the heart of every alert Christian today. Many answer it for themselves in blind petition; others grope for a satisfying answer, baffled by a human sense which sees the present world conflict from a wholly human viewpoint. Both prayers tend toward the right, and each is helpful in the degree that it is a recognition of a higher power in which the suppliant acknowledges faith. But in Christian Science we may approach the subject more accurately through precepts which exist and operate quite independently of human concepts and yearnings. And when once such a precept—or law—is laid hold of, we find solid ground underfoot and can go forward.

In the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," the author, Mary Baker Eddy, referring to the opposites of Life and Truth, says (p. 196), "They have no relation to God wherewith to establish their power." This statement of absolute truth is not affected by your concept of it or mine, and, when spiritually apprehended, it immediately begins to order our thoughts on a scientific basis. If there are those who are conscientiously praying for the end of the war but hesitate to throw the entire weight of their thought on the side of one nation against another, feeling there must be good in both, let them consider that in this war, as in no other, the determination to exterminate all recognition of God has ranged itself diametrically opposite to the desire to worship God—to love good and pursue it. The cleavage is so definite that no one should hesitate to throw his weight on the side that is standing for the teachings of Christianity.

And here Mrs. Eddy's statement not only takes the choice out of our hands but guarantees victory. The ideologies or systems of government which make their boast that God is not actual or necessary to them have voluntarily forfeited all claim to "establish their power." They have cut themselves off from all resources, all strength, all supply. They are like cut flowers stuck in a pot of earth; for a short time they look very much like a growing plant, but having no roots they are branches unrelated to "the true vine"; therefore there is no life in them at all, and their destruction is sure.

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