Article April 29, 1950 Issue

THE DUTY TO WATCH AND PRAY

KATHERINE S. WHITNEY

In Gethsemane, at his hour of greatest need, Jesus asked his disciples to watch with him while he prayed. Three times "he went a little farther" to pray, but each time on returning found the disciples sleeping. How different the events might have been at that time had they observed the Master's injunction (Matt. 26:41), "Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation." In her Message to The Mother Church for 1901 Mary Baker Eddy writes (p. 14), "To be delivered from believing in what is unreal, from fearing it, following it, or loving it, one must watch and pray that he enter not into temptation—even as one guards his door against the approach of thieves."

Our Leader not only admonishes us to watch and pray that we be not tempted to believe in evil as real, but makes it a daily duty. A Section of the Manual of The Mother Church by Mrs. Eddy is entitled "Alertness to Duty" (Art. VIII, Sect. 6) and reads: "It shall be the duty of every member of this Church to defend himself daily against aggressive mental suggestion, and not be made to forget nor to neglect his duty to God, to his Leader, and to mankind. By his works he shall be judged,—and justified or condemned."

The world appears to have many conflicting duties. It worships what it wants to worship, often under the guise of the noble word duty. It would cloak self-will and material interest under a pretense of self-sacrificing duty and self-worshiping martyrdom. These phases of a false sense of duty are many and conflicting in nature. Hatred, resentment, and personal domination are sometimes cloaked under a false sense of duty.

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