Editorial September 11, 1948 Issue

NEVER GIVE UP

Helen Wood Bauman

A Lesson which Christ Jesus taught with special care was that of persistence in prayer. He knew the seeming tenacity of mortal belief and prepared his followers to meet it with an enduring, constant fidelity to God. In the eighteenth chapter of Luke we read that "he spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not to faint." This was the parable of the unjust judge who granted the plea of a widow who importuned him, not because he wished to be just, but because of her "continual coming." The Master followed the lesson with the searching query (verse 7), "Shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him, though he bear long with them?"

The Christian Scientist knows that spiritual healing should be instantaneous, and he yearns for the understanding of Science which uplifts one to that exalted state of consciousness wherein Mind's infinitude of good empowers him to demonstrate invariable dominion over error. He is not dismayed, however, when he finds himself compelled to take the human footsteps of persistent and consecrated prayer. Step by step, divine Love reveals itself and its eternal concepts to his expectant consciousness as the unreal mortal sense of self and substance yields to spiritual reality.

Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered Christian Science and proved the truths of its teaching by remarkable healings of human ills, encouraged her followers to persist in prayer and never fear defeat. In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" she writes (p. 410): "Every trial of our faith in God makes us stronger. The more difficult seems the material condition to be overcome by Spirit, the stronger should be our faith and the purer our love."

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