They had not succeeded. A father had brought his young son to them, and they had not healed him. When Christ Jesus treated the boy, he "was cured from that very hour." Matt. 17:18. Jesus told the disciples they had not healed him because of their unbelief, and then he graphically described what could be done with just a grain of faith. "Howbeit," he concluded (as the King James Version has it), "this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting." V. 21.
Did the disciples—do we—understand what he meant? The Master had quickly healed the boy, but obviously he had observed no appointed fast in order to do so. What did he mean by fasting? "Merely to abstain from eating was not sufficient to meet his demand," Mrs. Eddy points out. "The animus of his saying was: Silence appetites, passion, and all that wars against Spirit and spiritual power." The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 339.
These are the spiritual dynamics symbolized by fasting. And while material symbols may be misunderstood, and even misused, true spiritual fasting can serve only the purposes of good. Hunger strikers have sacrificed their lives in political protest. Tradition, declaring certain foods unsuitable to eat, deprives people in some instances of proper nourishment. But the fast that is the silencing of "appetites, passion, and all that wars against Spirit and spiritual power" can only heal and make free.
