The chapter on Prayer in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, occupies only seventeen pages; but it offers to the thinker a new and helpful concept of prayer, and furnishes an additional response to humanity's cry, made centuries ago by the disciples of the Master, "Lord, teach us to pray." Rarely, if ever, in modern literature has so much been said in so few words as in this chapter. Seldom has so profound a subject been so simply and helpfully treated, and so clearly elucidated.
Without attempting to expound or amplify its ethics, we may profitably consider two short extracts from the chapter on Prayer which contain seven essentials to right praying. On page 4 Mrs. Eddy writes, "What we most need is the prayer of fervent desire for growth in grace, expressed in patience, meekness, love, and good deeds." She there indicates the elements of grace which are attainable by prayer. And on page 15 she says, "Self-forgetfulness, purity, and affection are constant prayers." These seven virtues—"patience, meekness, love, and good deeds," "self-forgetfulness, purity, and affection"—specify a line of thought and action which leads to health, happiness, and holiness, now and always.
Briefly considered in the order given, it may be said that few of us know what true patience involves until Christian Science enters our lives; and many of us would be better off to-day, if we used it more generally and generously. Too little patience is a cause of the delayed fruition of many a prayer. In Christian Science, patience is much more than merely waiting for something to mature or to come to pass. It has no kinship with idleness, no relationship with inertness or procrastination. It is the silent partner of activity, the counselor of success, the twin brother of power. Its children are alertness, resourcefulness, and sagacity. But from first to last it recognizes only one source of wisdom, of true power, of worthy achievement,—God Himself.
