THERE are few things in human experience about which more varying opinions are entertained than about prayer. Upon most of us, at some time or other, the need for prayer has been impressed; either in childhood by those having charge of us, or in later years, when coming into contact with others who had the welfare of humanity at heart. But did they show us how to pray, so as to be able to-say with Jesus: "Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me. And I knew that thou hearest me always"?
Many people believe that prayer is a means of informing God of many things He seems not to notice, or of reminding Him of things He seems to forget. They not only ask Him to do all they think He ought to do for the general welfare, but, more selfishly, also implore Him to do whatever they personally wish or desire, even without considering the effect the granting of these prayers would have on their fellow-men. Now does this way of praying accord with the recognition that God is omniscient— all-knowing and all-wise? Others believe prayer to be consonant with submission to evil,—disaster, sin, suffering, and death; because, when praying, "Thy will be done," they consider God, the all-loving Father, to be the creator of evil as well as of good. Still others take prayer to be a means of procuring God's forgiveness, even though they do not intend to, or do not see how to, forsake their sins; as if the Holy One were not "of purer eyes than to behold evil," to condone it, or to tolerate it.
In these days, however, many of our fellow-men have given up praying altogether; either because the commonly entertained view of prayer seems incongruous with the idea of an all-wise Supreme Being, or else because they have grown tired of sending up prayers which bring no evidence of being heard. To many who find themselves at this point, Christian Science has proved to be of great value in giving them a right understanding of what prayer really is and of what it really does. Mrs. Eddy says in "No and Yes" (p. 39): "Prayer can neither change God, nor bring His designs into mortal modes; but it can and does change our modes and our false sense of Life, Love, and Truth, uplifting us to Him... It shows us more clearly than we saw before, what we already have and are; and most of all, it shows us what God is." Christian Science, then, unfolds God to man, unfolds God as our loving Father-Mother, ever upholding and blessing all His children, as the only Lawgiver, whose laws mean the perpetuation of all that He is,—Life, Truth, and Love. It teaches us to know Him as infinite divine Principle, the one creator and source of all being, the governing cause of all that really is.
