True Prayer and Vain Repetitions

William P. McKenzie

Jesus had very little patience with the formalities of religion. With keen characterization he showed the ineffectuality of the labored efforts of the Pharisees and others who "for a pretence make long prayer," who would trumpet their almsgiving in the streets, or paint their faces with haggard lines during a fast, so as to "appear unto men to fast." His sense of prayer was simple and direct. It meant to come close to the Father by first shutting out worldly cares, and then in absolute quiet to commune with Spirit, in order that the result might be manifest in spirituality; and so the Father, seeing in secret, would thus reward openly. He was emphatic in saying to his disciples, "When ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do."

This is to be noted: that even to the heathen vain repetitions became monotonous; hence a prayer mill was invented, the prayer being first inscribed, then fastened to a wheel, which as it was revolved brought the prayer to constantly recurring notice. But Thibetan cleverness went farther, and relieved the priests of the weary work of praying (or turning the wheel) by attaching the prayer mill to a water wheel, so that the praying became absolutely mechanical.

We smile at these quaint devices of those we are pleased to call the heathen; but our superior airs would vanish if we realized how the theory of a prayer mill is utilized by various groups of self-seekers who are making their prayers not to God but to mankind. These groups, having no sense of God, of course do not pray to any invisible source of good for benefit. The good they desire is visible to the eyes and appreciable to the senses, and their deep desire is to get it away from those who have it. Let not those who call themselves modern and civilized think themselves so superior to their brethren in Thibet. What is a subsidized newspaper but a prayer mill, constantly demanding of that hydra-headed god, the public, that those who express their determined desire shall gain it, and enjoy advantage, perquisite, and power. As we have said, the mundane schemers have no sense of God as Principle, or the source of good; but they have the subtle conviction that if they can mesmerize mankind, they can get abundantly just what they want, and so "lay field to field, till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth!"

The prophet Jeremiah records the divine denunciation of those who acquire the inheritance of others by subtlety and wrong mental methods. "As the partridge sitteth on eggs, and hatcheth them not; so he that getteth riches, and not by right, shall leave them in the midst of his days, and at his end shall be a fool." The insistent prayer of the subsidized newspaper may apparently succeed in the strengthening of wrong and the establishment of injustice, but all who trust to such methods are like those who sow the wind and of necessity reap the whirlwind. "They shall wither, and the whirlwind shall take them away as stubble."

We have a good example of prayer to mortal mind in the case of the cowardly slayer of the noble man who at the time was President of this country. This narrow-browed, vanity-haunted creature prayed for sympathy, and false women responded with flattery and flowers, like priestesses of mortal mind. Mrs. Eddy, the true woman, tells how she visited the assassin, and how her words penetrated his moral idiocy and roused conscience, so that the jailer said, "You have brought what will do him good" (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 112).

What this assassin was able to do in a small way to gain sympathy and win from a few the sentimental forgetfulness of the cruelty of his crime, other criminals attempt to do in a larger way. No matter how great the defalcation and dishonor of a man, his noisy prayer for sympathy will be made to mortal mind, which then pretends not to hear the quiet voice of justice making demand for restitution. A thinker spoke earnestly to the representative of a group which had defied all law and righteousness, and outraged humanity to such a degree that there was general disapproval in the world; and in reply this representative spoke not of reform, not of amendment, not of such restitution as the old Levitical law set forth to balance maiming and theft, but spoke only of making a new organization, not for crime, but for the gaining of sympathy. Such a theory of prayer would surely "make prayer the safety-valve for wrong-doing" in a way different from, and worse than, that discussed on page 6 of Science and Health.

The criminal first desires apathy, that he may work out his crime unhindered; then sympathy with his case, so that punishment be either hindered or made void. The prayer of the criminal is manifestly the prayer of the unrighteous. But the wonder of real prayer is in so uniting the seeker after God with divine Principle that upon him, and with him, the malign prayer of mortal mind has no effect whatever, and no influence. "He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty."

William P. McKenzie.

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October 20, 1917

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