PRAYERFUL QUESTIONS

It is not the aim of our Book Club to interpret the writings of any author.  We simply wish to encourage the reading of the books which are available in Christian Science Reading Rooms.  Reading along together is helpful and fun. And sharing our responses often sheds new light on passages that might otherwise have been overlooked.

 

In this spirit, let us now launch into a very famous book indeed, the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (S&H) written by one of the world’s most remarkable women, Mary Baker Eddy. 

Her book is studied by students of Christian Science daily in conjunction with the Bible.

 

Here’s what the Mary Baker Eddy Library’s web site has to say about S&H.

(http://www.marybakereddylibrary.org/mary-baker-eddy/writings/science-and-health)

Mary Baker Eddy’s primary work, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, is a 700-page book detailing her discovery of Christian Science, her system of healing, and her commentary on the Scriptures. It was the focal point for the expression of so many of Eddy’s ideas. “That work is the outgrowth of my whole life, as my dear husband used to say,” she wrote to a student.

 

First published in 1875, Science and Health has sold over 10 million copies and is a best-seller today. 2000-2001 yielded the book’s highest annual sales ever. It has also been cited by the Women’s National Book Association as “one of the 75 books by women whose words have changed the world.”

 

Following a serious accident, Eddy had a profound healing experience that provided important insights into the spiritual nature of life and health—insights which she had been seeking for many years. She later called that experience a “discovery” and soon sought to understand, replicate, make notes on, and teach this discovery to students and patients. As Eddy’s ability to prove the effectiveness of her discovery grew, she established herself as a healer and began to teach others how to heal. In 1868, she was asked to help a woman dying from pneumonia. The doctor in attendance had informed her that there was no hope for the patient, but Eddy immediately cured the woman. The doctor urged her to write a book about her system of healing and share it with the world. Science and Health is the result.

 

Prayer appears as Chapter One in the book.  So, let’s begin.

 

Would you like to heal the sick?  What method will you use?

Perhaps you would look to medicine, meditation, manipulation, magnetism, or maybe metaphysics?

 

What about reforming the sinner?

Would you try psychology, punishment, persuasion, or perhaps prayer?

 

Let’s take a look at what the chapter on has to say about the “prayer” option.

 

The very first sentence in Chapter 1 reads: “The prayer that reforms the sinner and heals the sick is an absolute faith that all things are possible to God, – a spiritual understanding of Him, an unselfed love.”

 

Furthermore, we discover that if we seek the “the Christianization and health of mankind”, we might be interested to find that Mrs. Eddy’s own experience proved to her that God’s gracious means for its successful accomplishment include prayer, watching, working, and self-immolation.

 

So, what is prayer and what is it not?  The following comes from S&H.

 

Prayer is	Prayer is not
Absolute faith that all things are possible to God	Asking God to be God
A spiritual understanding of God	Pleading with the divine Mind as one pleads with a human being
An unselfed love	Advising God
Desire which goes forth hungering after righteousness	Asking the divine Principle of all goodness to do His own work
Humble fervent petitions	Superstition
Goodness	Creeds
Putting our finger on the lips and remembering our blessings	Clothed in human forms
Fervent desire for growth in grace, expressed in patience, meekness, love, and good deeds	A confessional to cancel sin
Habitually struggling to be always good	Calling on God to forgive our work badly done or left undone
Longing to be better and holier, expressed in daily watchfulness and striving to assimilate more of the divine character	A safety-valve for wrong-doing
Sorrow for wrong-doing	Momentary solemnity and elevation of thought from impressive audible prayer
Sincere reformation	Physical sensation producing material ecstasy and emotion
Sober resolve	A self-satisfied ventilation of fervent sentiments
Wholesome perception of God’s requirements	Utterance of desires which are not real
Self-abnegation and purity	Hypocrisy
An honest heart	Self-justification
Aspiration, humility, gratitude and love felt	Impurity and insincerity
Self-examination	Self-deception
Patient listening	Giving thanks that we are “not as other men”
Loving our neighbour better – regarding them unselfishly	Pursuing the old selfishness
Kindness	Material sensation, affection, worship
Blessing those that curse us	Human will
The desire to do right	Unwillingness to follow the Master’s example
Leaving our real desires to be rewarded by Him	Asking that sin not be punished
Sacrifice everything for holiness
Understanding the divine healing Principle as manifested in Jesus	Blind faith
Deep and conscientious protests of Truth – of man’s likeness to God and of man’s unity with Truth and Love	Going beyond convictions and beyond the honest standpoint of fervent desire
Mental
Secret yearning and open striving for the accomplishment of all we ask	“Vain repetitions”
Desire cherished honestly and silently and  humbly	A torrent of words
Relinquishing the human doubts and fears attending the belief that God is a corporeal person	Praying to God as a corporeal person
Obedient to the law of God
Absolutely governed by divine Love	Ignorance of divine Principle, Love
Spiritual understanding	Emotional ecstasy or faith
Entering into the closet and shutting the door
Audience with Spirit
Closed lips, material sense silent
Earnest longings
Denial of sin
Pleading God’s allness
Honest hearts
Self-forgetfulness, purity, affection
Practice	Profession
Understanding	Belief
trustworthiness
demonstration	Mere faith without demonstration
Heaven-born aspiration
Spiritual consciousness

 

So, when Jonah (see the book of Jonah in the Bible) found himself in the belly of a fish, he “prayed unto the Lord his God” and his thoughts turned around till he could say “I will pay that that I have vowed”, whereupon the fish “vomited out Jonah upon the dry land” and his life went in a whole new direction.  Such is the power of prayer.

 

S&H 2: 15 “Prayer cannot change the Science of being, but it tends to bring us into harmony with it.”