Article August 27, 1966 Issue

Seeking God First

RICHARD H. STRAIN

Many individuals at one time or another feel frustrated because some problem they are trying to work out through prayer as it is used in Christian Science has not been solved. The cause of the frustration and the lack of good results cannot be attributed to the failure of Christian Science to heal. Christian Science deals primarily with thought, and it always heals when properly applied. Many of us are tempted to forget this when a material condition seems very real to us, because we consider matter as of primary importance.

The basic facts of Christian Science are that God is Spirit and that He is All-in-all. Matter, therefore, does not in reality exist. Having no entity and no room for being, matter has no actuality. When this fact is revealed and understood through one's study of Science or through one's prayers, one can see that matter is a concept of mortal thought. Human thinking erroneously claims that matter identifies man and is the substance of his experience. Those who are uninstructed in the teachings of Christian Science usually turn to a medical doctor to cure the body, a psychiatrist to rationalize mortal thinking, a job counselor or employment agency to exchange a bad job for a good job, a marriage counselor to make an unhappy marriage bearable.

The Christian Scientist, on the other hand, turns to God and endeavors to understand the truth of any situation. Mrs. Eddy writes in Science and Health, "The starting-point of divine Science is that God, Spirit, is All-in-all, and that there is no other might nor Mind,—that God is Love, and therefore He is divine Principle."^{ Science and Health, p. 275;} If one reasons from the standpoint of spiritual truth and grasps the scientific facts relative to a situation, he then sees that there is no reality in matter's claims.