During the ebb and flow of human experience, we may be learning that the comings and goings of everyday life, if based in material thinking, can often feel unfulfilling and exhausting. And we may be sensing that a hyper-agitated, mortal sense of life isn’t going to deliver what many of us most deeply and inwardly desire: peace, spiritual-mindedness, and the ability and capacity to serve others in a scientifically Christian manner through healing—in short, a life filled with manifestations of God’s peaceful presence, a life where we spiritually understand that God, Spirit, sustains us and matter does not.

Indeed, the world needs each one of us to be a spiritual thinker, rather than a material believer. It needs us to spiritualize consciousness, to uplift thought to God, to purify motives, to realize the innate innocence of God’s children, and to faithfully express spiritual, healing affection toward all. Mary Baker Eddy, in her first address in The Mother Church—The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts—said to the congregants, “Beloved children, the world has need of you,—and more as children than as men and women: it needs your innocence, unselfishness, faithful affection, uncontaminated lives” (Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896, p. 110).

Just what do our innocence, unselfishness, faithful affection, and lives uncontaminated by material beliefs bring to the world? They bring a thought imbued with a spiritual sense that neutralizes and disarms hatred. They bring a life pure and upright that shines forth and imparts good. They bring an affection that touches every receptive heart and an innocence that loves unconditionally.

The world needs these qualities expressed because thought uplifted and spiritually based stills the storm of materialism and replaces it with a spiritual understanding of life in Spirit, God. This understanding includes the recognition that evil cannot have life or power, because God, good, is all-powerful. The result is healing, safety, and harmony, even in the midst of the world’s upheaval and hyper-attention to materialism and its concomitants.

Preserving the virtues of faithful affection, unselfishness, innocence, and an uncontaminated life requires prayer—often deep prayer—and alertness. Mrs. Eddy continues, “You need also to watch, and pray that you preserve these virtues unstained, and lose them not through contact with the world” (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 110). Watching requires alertness to the intrusion of materially based thinking, and the prayer that seeks to preserve these virtues and repel such intrusions isn’t just asking God for something and hoping we receive it. It is a heartfelt recognition of truth that is spiritually factual, based on the allness of God. 

When we are confronted with sensualism, we can reverse it with the spiritual understanding of man’s innocence and purity as God’s child. When we’re challenged by selfishness or egotism, we can pray to see God’s creation as selfless and loving. When we’re faced with an affection that is less than faithful, we can pray to see each other as expressing integrity and wholeness.

This type of prayer, then, keeps thought open to the spiritual facts of God’s idea, man—you and me, in our spiritual and only true individuality. It keeps watch over consciousness so that our lives remain pure. We can know that no brush with the world can take away our ability to trust in God, our spiritual fidelity to Truth, our spiritual fearlessness, or our reflected healing power from Spirit. No evil, error, or sin touches the child of God’s creating.

Watching and praying mature us spiritually.

Christ Jesus’ healing of the leper (see Mark 1:40–42) points to the value of what expressing these virtues can bring. Jesus’ pure thought, innocence, unselfishness, faithful affection, and uncontaminated life enabled him to see this man spiritually, not as a contaminated mortal, but as the idea of God, reflecting Him just as we all do, in our real individuality. Jesus saw the leper as already innately spiritually pure, just as Jesus saw the blind as whole and free when he healed them, as well (see Luke 7:21). Christ Jesus’ scientifically based thought and life enabled those who were receptive, such as the leper, to realize the power of Spirit over matter, which resulted in healing.

What better way is there to “watch, and pray” to “preserve these virtues unstained” than to reverse the suggestions of matter with the calming, cleansing, healing truths of Spirit, thus refusing to allow our interactions with the world to bring our thought down into fear, sin, and disease?

Through the study of Christian Science, we learn how to watch and pray to challenge the negative, mortal suggestions that present themselves to consciousness. Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy teaches: “Science shows that material, conflicting mortal opinions and beliefs emit the effects of error at all times, but this atmosphere of mortal mind cannot be destructive to morals and health when it is opposed promptly and persistently by Christian Science. Truth and Love antidote this mental miasma, and thus invigorate and sustain existence” (pp. 273–274).

In dealing with the suggestions of the carnal mind, we can learn to respond promptly, persistently, and patiently. Our immediate correction of the carnal mind’s suggestions destroys its attempt to pull thought away from Spirit, God. Our persistent alertness and awareness keep this so-called mind from running amok in our thinking.

Watching and praying mature us spiritually, enabling us to act fearlessly against aggressive suggestions that confront us. Worldly, material beliefs cannot move in on us when we refuse to open our thought to them. When faced with fears, a sense of susceptibility to aggressive mental suggestions, feelings of inadequacy in our prayers, or a hesitancy to test our own healing wings, we can replace them with prayer that patiently nurtures the qualities of innocence, unselfishness, faithful affection, and purity. 

These qualities of thought, reflected from divine Spirit, counteract the aggressive suggestions of matter. With persistent affirmation of the truth and a growing understanding of our relationship to God, we replace the seeming evil with the recognition that good, derived from God, is all there is. And we do this through right, scientific, Christian thought, as taught in Christian Science.

Mrs. Eddy concludes her first address in The Mother Church by exclaiming, “What grander ambition is there than to maintain in yourselves what Jesus loved, and to know that your example, more than words, makes morals for mankind!” (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 110). Our own ambition to express the virtues Jesus so loved and demonstrated will result in our lives being uncontaminated by material beliefs, filled with unselfishness, faithful affection, and innocence. This brings healing, spiritual-mindedness, and Christian love and service to mankind. Indeed, the world has need of you!