PROBABLY every student of Christian Science, quite early in his experience, feels that he has never really known how to pray, and echoes the cry of the disciples to their Master, "Lord, teach us to pray." In the beautiful chapter on Prayer in the Christian Science textbook, Mrs. Eddy says, "We must close the lips and silence the material senses" (p. 15). We see, therefore, that prayer is the activity of Mind, and we have learned that there is only one Mind, God, Spirit; so we find that nothing desired from the standpoint of the material senses can be granted us by God, who is Spirit, for "the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other."
What, then, is our remedy? What may we ask of God? How can we hope for help in this the physical realm? Our Leader says, "Immortal Mind, governing all, must be acknowledged as supreme in the physical realm, so-called, as well as in the spiritual" (Science and Health, p. 427). This helps us to see that what we call the physical realm is only a wrong concept of God's kingdom, a false sense of the manifestations of infinite Mind; that it is nothing but our sense of that which we say constitutes the physical realm which is wrong; and our prayer, which must be the reflection of the one Mind, is destined to dissipate this false sense, which is all that prayer can do.
There is nothing wrong with God or with His creation, since God, who is infinite good, made all that was made and pronounced it "very good." Jesus said, "Your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him;" and the Father, who is the infinite source of supply for all our needs, could not for that very reason know that His children had any needs which were left unsupplied. The Father knows the things needed; therefore, from the very nature of God, infinite Love, everything necessary for the welfare and contentment of His children must be already supplied, awaiting their recognition. This being true, our prayer is to lift us up above the false consciousness of, material need, into the understanding of man as spiritual, having access to the inexhaustible source of all supply.
