Even to one who has gained but a slight understanding of Christian Science, the argument sometimes advanced by those who would disparage its beneficent work for mankind, that this teaching cannot be Christian since its exponents are a prayerless people, borders on the absurd. The sick, the sinning, the sorrowing, all who have found healing, help, and comfort through the ministrations of Christian Science, know that prayer born of uplifted desire is an essential factor in the blessings they have received. Nothing in fact could more clearly define the perpetual attitude of the Christian Scientist than what Mrs. Eddy has given us in the opening sentence of Science and Health: "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." Equipped with this prayer, this "absolute faith," the Christian Scientist goes forth to the resistance and overcoming of all that is unlike God, good.
Such prayer is not only in line with our Master's teaching, as voiced in the Lord's Prayer, but it also accords with the dictionary definition: "The act of offering reverent petitions .. . . generally accompanied with thanksgiving, confession, and adoration." When daily and hourly the Scientist declares either audibly or silently the omnipotence and omnipresence of God, divine Truth, Life, and Love, and that no manifestation of error can stand before Him, he is meeting every condition for true prayer. And that prayer is answered in proportion as his love is unselfed,—as he offers himself merely as a channel through which the healing streams of Love may flow to bless mankind. Because he is striving to bring this absolute recognition of the divine allness to bear on every discordant condition which may present itself, working patiently to the end that "the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord," his is truly a life of prayer. "Every day is a new beginning," a new opportunity to thank God for His goodness; and because that goodness is ever pouring forth in richest bounty, to the grateful heart life becomes a continuous thanksgiving.
What is thanksgiving after all but an upspringing from the heart of a song of gratitude which finds its highest expression in passing along or sharing with others the joy and happiness with which we ourselves have been blessed. It was this right sense of thanksgiving which Paul commended to the Corinthians when he wrote: "Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort; who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God." And is not this what Mrs. Eddy means when she says (Science and Health, p. 3): "Gratitude is much more than a verbal expression of thanks. Action expresses more gratitude than speech"? The Master's commandment is, "As I have loved you, that ye also love one another," and the more use we make of what we have, the more we give out to others, the more we shall receive wherewith we may continue to bless and to be blessed.
