Editorial February 26, 1949 Issue

PRAYING AND FASTING

Helen Wood Bauman

In the seventeenth chapter of Matthew an incident is recorded which is of great import to the Christian healer. The disciples of Christ Jesus had failed to heal a sick boy, and when his father appealed to the Master for further aid, the lad was quickly restored to health. Later, the disciples asked the reason for their failure, and Jesus replied, "Because of your unbelief." Mary Baker Eddy quotes the Master's answer in "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" and adds an illuminating phrase (p. 222), " 'This kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting' (refraining from admitting the claims of the senses)."

To the student of Christian Science, praying and fasting have much the same meaning, for in the effective, healing prayer of Christian Science one fasts from the belief of mortal existence as real, and pure Mind, Spirit, God, wherein is no consciousness of the harsh claims of the corporeal senses, is seen as infinite—as All. To refrain from admitting the claims of the senses and to identify oneself as the incorporeal idea of divine Mind is to understand that evil is neither claimant nor claim, since God is the only creator and His work is good. This scientific praying destroys the illusion of a mortal consciousness which defines all things as shifting, changing, deceiving material concepts. Then the ever-present facts of real being gradually become apparent: steadfast purity, immutable health, unchanging joy, and deathless life.

All Christian Science healing evidences the one Mind, eternal Truth, urging its resistless truths of universal harmony and spiritual perfection. Mrs. Eddy says in "No and Yes" (p. 30), "It is Truth's knowledge of its own infinitude which forbids the genuine existence of even a claim to error." This infinite Truth, this one divine consciousness, dispels the darkness of human ignorance, and evil beliefs, externalized as matter and its conditions, fade from thought.

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