Article September 7, 1957 Issue

THE PRAYER THAT HEALS THE SICK

HAROLD E. MARIETTA

Understanding prayer lifts the burden of fear, disease, lack, and strife that would make the individual believe himself to be the victim of material circumstances instead of the creature of an altogether good creator. Christian Science shows us how to pray this prayer. This Science proclaims God as the only cause and creator, the all-loving Father-Mother. It denies the erroneous belief that God creates man capable of sin and then punishes him for sinning or that He uses sin and suffering as a means of chastising His creation. Christian Science teaches that disease is but the darkness of human belief, which disappears before the light of Truth. God's law can heal whatever needs to be healed.

In the first chapter of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mary Baker Eddy gives a clear exposition of prayer. The opening sentence reads (p. 1), "The prayer that reforms the sinner and heals the sick is an absolute faith that all things are possible to God,—a spiritualunderstanding of Him, an unselfed love."

Experience teaches that prayer is most effective when belief in the reality of matter and evil is destroyed by one's throwing all the weight of one's thinking into the scale of Spirit, thus recognizing the omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience of God. The efficacy of healing is best demonstrated when we are conscious that because he reflects God, the real man is wholly spiritual; and being thus perfect in divine Mind, he is never in matter or subject to material conditions. The power of prayer, then, is such as to awaken the consciousness of the individual from the mistaken assumption that man is material.

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