As we enter the New Year, it is well to give special thought to the time in which we live. With its sudden changes and quickening pace of material development, we are challenged to increasing spiritual effort. There is danger in the more prosperous countries that the people will become apathetic through soft living. They do not have to struggle to survive as did their primitive forebears. Individually they are more secure than ever. On the other hand, collectively considered, they are less secure than ever, for they are confronted with material forces of vast dimension poised for destruction and with the possibility that these forces will be released by someone with political power but without moral sensibility.

The need to maintain spiritual alertness and the ability to pray effectively was never greater. The power of prayer is what needs to be developed. For today's dangers can be met only by the spiritual forces of love and intelligence, which prayer brings to light. Christian Scientists pray to become conscious of the omnipotence of God. Prayer not only awakens them to the presence of God and His intelligent control of all, but it stimulates them to increase their efforts to demonstrate the truths of divine Science that have dominion over evil.

Mary Baker Eddy says in her Message to The Mother Church for 1900 (p. 9), "The twentieth century in the ebb and flow of thought will challenge the thinkers, speakers, and workers to do their best."

History tells of periods of ebb and flow in human thought, when times of spiritual activity were succeeded by times of inertia or decline of interest. Moses was succeeded by Joshua, Elijah by Elisha, and Jesus by his disciples and the self-sacrificing Christians of the first centuries after the Master's brilliant ministry. In these instances, human thought in general was unable to grasp the full significance of the moral, prophetical, and Christly developments that had taken place; and the flood of good was followed by an ebb of it.

A new flood of spiritual power and light has come to the world today through the discovery by Mrs. Eddy of the Science of being. The great challenge of this period is the possible ebb of spiritual dedication and effort that would keep Christian Scientists from doing their best. Such an ebb will be avoided if they utilize effectively the revealed truth that there is no reaction in Truth and that spiritual progress is divine law.

Christian Science is clarifying human thought, making plain the meaning of the resistance of the so-called carnal, or mortal, mind to revealed Truth, and proving the powerlessness of error to resist the self-assertion of the Almighty. This Science is showing that the great disturbances in the world are evidences that widespread Christianization of mankind is taking place. Even though non-Christians would deny that any such change is going on in their own case, this Christianization is touching their lives and their surrounding conditions, and not one can escape the effect of it.

Christ as universal Truth has come to the whole world to bless and protect it. Social conscience is increasingly sensitive. Floods of sympathy for the hungry and impoverished are stirring efforts to provide opportunities for adequate self-help. Modern means of meeting the human needs of expanding population through industrialization are evidence of enlightenment. Political dishonesty and aggression are finding that worldwide indignation is hard to stand against. Humanity is on the march, and that march is one of moral and spiritual progress.

Christian Scientists should demand of themselves increased dedication to the metaphysical Science they acknowledge and to the proving of Spirit's supremacy over every opposing evidence of mortal mind. Jesus warned his followers of world disturbances, yes, even of universal disturbances, and he said (Matt. 24: 12), "Because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold." Here is the ebb that is to be watched for and avoided. Love of God and man should be constantly increased by the realization that divine Mind determines the extent of man's love and that there is no power that can diminish it.

Material systems may challenge Christian Science to match their power. But materialistic thinking can never grasp the goals or the means of scientific Christianity. Mrs. Eddy says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 268), "Materialistic hypotheses challenge metaphysics to meet in final combat." Only the love that sees the perfection of God's creation and the unreality of the mist of material sensation that calls itself the universe can meet the challenges of these times and make the combat final.

The Master gave us the divine plan for manifesting power when he said (Mark 12:30, 31): "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all they strength: this is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself."

Obedience to these two great commandments opens the floodgates of power which alone can meet the challenge of the twentieth century. Obedience to them makes prayer powerful. Prayer that embraces the world in the knowledge that God alone outlines the destiny of man is what the world needs today.

Helen Wood Bauman