Article May 6, 1967 Issue

Prayer: Precise and Specific

MARIAN LEE RAY

In a law case one must meet a specific charge with a specific defense. To illustrate, if a defendant at law were charged with forgery, it would be inadequate to limit the defense to showing that the accused was a good citizen. However true that might be, such a defense would not clear him of the charge of forgery. Likewise, in our Christian Science practice we often fail to handle error adequately by limiting our declarations of truth to such general statements as "I am God's perfect child" or "I am in my right place."

While many gratifying healings have followed even such simple assertions of truth, more than a general declaration of our immunity to evil as God's reflection is often necessary. If error claims that we have sprained a muscle, for example, we must apply to the error the exact counterfact that man's substance is wholly spiritual. We must declare that material muscles or nerves are incapable of communicating pain, that activity is not dependent upon matter but follows from the omniaction of God, Life. Mrs. Eddy's writings give us invaluable instruction in this method of scientific prayer, or treatment. She says: "To heal by argument, find the type of the ailment, get its name, and array your mental plea against the physical. Argue at first mentally, not audibly, that the patient has no disease, and conform the argument so as to destroy the evidence of disease."^{Science and Health, p. 412;}

Even though Christ Jesus' healings were generally instantaneous, his words often show that his detection and rejection of error were exact. For instance, after he had healed the man at the pool of Bethesda, he commanded him to sin no more, even though the man's problem had appeared to be physical only. In healing a child afflicted with seizures, he rebuked the error by name, saying, "Thou dumb and deaf spirit, I charge thee, come out of him, and enter no more into him."^{Mark 9:25;}

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