Article January 1, 1955 Issue

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE TREATMENT IS PRAYER

NEIL MARTIN

Any attempt to explain the nature of a Christian Science treatment would be presumptuous unless its clear purpose were to direct attention to the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy. Particularly helpful in this connection is the section in the textbook captioned "Mental Treatment Illustrated" (pp. 410-442). Here those who would follow St. Paul's counsel to put off the old man (of error) and to put on the new man (of God), find the rules for scientific metaphysical treatment which ensure that result.

Every experienced Christian Scientist will have found, through demonstration, his or her own most successful use of the rules laid down. But none will have found success who have ignored the rules or have sought to reinterpret them. Since the discovery of Christian Science by Mrs. Eddy less than a century ago, multitudes of men and women have learned through turning to Christian Science in trial and triumph just how effective is a right comprehension of its Principle and practice. And they have been rewarded by their confidence in Mrs. Eddy's words (Science and Health, p. 1), "The prayer that reforms the sinner and heals the sick is an absolute faith that all things are possible to God,—a spiritual understanding of Him, an unselfed love."

Treatment in Christian Science is indeed prayer; and healing results from its revelatory teachings in regard to the true character of prayer. An important aspect of prayer in Science is the affirmation of the perfection of God and His creation—of man's inseparability from Life itself. To pray affirmatively is unceasingly to identify oneself as the individual spiritual idea of God, expressing the Divine Being. Affirmative prayer is based on the understanding that there is one all-embracing Mind, and that man reflects the unerring intelligence which is the primal quality of that Mind. Affirmative prayer includes a willingness to subjugate self-love to the beneficent influence of the Love that is God. It is a self-immolating desire to reflect more of God as Soul, and hence to express the Soul-derived qualities of perception, grace, and gratitude.

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