"We are troubled on every side," wrote Paul in the midst of tribulation, "yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed" (II Cor. 4:8, 9). And he went on to assure the Corinthians that "our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory."
Too often it is believed that recourse to spiritual means of healing or deliverance from human distress of any kind has not succeeded, when the simple fact is, if honestly faced, that spiritual means has not actually been applied. It may have been reached for in an emergency on the basis of "any port in a storm." It may have been tried in momentary desperation instead of a pill, or a prescription, or exhausted personal resources. But it may never have involved, even secondarily, the slightest surrender to the divine purpose or the slightest yearning for the spiritual unction and impetus which are inseparable from genuine Christian healing.
When materialism has insinuated into human consciousness the dread falsity, incurability, this does not mean simply that an immediate turning to a human concept of prayer as the only thing left to try is sufficient. For example, prayer as it is understood in Christian Science is the divine means of healing through the perception of spiritual reality, and therefore it is not and cannot be a mere utensil. It requires, as Paul plainly stated in the last verse of the chapter from II Corinthians which began this article, that those turning to the waiting arms of God, divine Love, for peace and sweet release shall "look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal."
