"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." This sentence opens the most unique chapter on prayer ever written and is found in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy.
Absolute faith spiritualizes one's thought regarding prayer, lifting it from a blind faith in God and fearful petition and supplication into the affirmation and acknowledgment of perfect God and of man perfect, coexistent and coeternal with God; of God as infinite Love and of man as the expression of Love; of God as ever-present good and of man as possessing all good.
Without faith there is no spiritual understanding, nor is there spiritual understanding without faith. Faith is more than mere belief, more than placid agreement. Mrs. Eddy says(ibid., p. 297): "Faith is higher and more spiritual than belief. It is a chrysalis state of human thought, in which spiritual evidence, contradicting the testimony of material sense, begins to appear, and Truth, the ever-present, is becoming understood." The transformation of human thought through spiritual understanding is gained by the study of the Bible and Science and Health, which acquaints one with God, the Principle of all true being.
