PRAYER IN DIVINE
SCIENCE
W. John Murray
New
Thoughts on Old Doctrines
Divine Science Publishing Co.
New York, N.Y., 1918
[65] "What
things soever ye desire when ye pray,
believe ye have received them, and ye
shall have them.
"Before they call, I will answer.
"If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask
of God that giveth to all men liberally
and upbraideth not, and it shall be given
him.
"But let him ask in faith, nothing
wavering. For he that wavereth is like a
wave of the sea, driven with the wind and
tossed.
"For let not that man think that he shall
receive anything from the Lord.
"If ye shall ask anything in my name, I
will do it.
"For your Father knoweth what things ye
have need of before you ask him.
"The prayer of faith shall save the sick,
and the Lord will raise him up.
"And if he have committed sins, they
shall be forgiven him.
"Be careful for nothing, but in
everything by prayer with thanksgiving,
let your requests be made known to
God.
"The effectual, fervent prayer of the
righteous man availeth much.
"Father, I thank thee that thou hast
heard me, and I know that thou hearest me
always."
[66]
BLANK
[67] PRAYER
IN DIVINE SCIENCE
"Therefore I
say unto you that what things soever ye
desire, when ye pray, believe that ye
receive them, and ye shall have
them.” --MARK 11:24.
JAMES, the
Apostle, in his wonderful epistle says:
"Is any man sick among you, let him call
in the elders of the church, and the
prayer of faith shall save the sick." You
will notice that James says "shall save
the sick." He does not say "may", as we
would today, but he makes a positive
statement, --"the prayer of faith
shall save the sick."
History
records that for something like three
hundred years immediately after the
beginning of the Christian era, prayer
was accredited a therapeutic value that
it never had before, and with which it
has never been credited since. Through
ignorance of the facts many people feel
that all spiritual healing by the power
of prayer was limited to Jesus and his
immediate disciples. So [68] they
constantly declare that the age of
miracles is past, meaning by this that
healing by purely spiritual means, if it
ever was successfully practiced, has
become a lost art. Or, if they believe
the Theologians, declare that God never
intended that spiritual healing should go
on throughout the ages; that it was one
of the outward or visible manifestations
of unseen power intended by Jesus to
usher in and emphasis the new order of
things, the new dispensation. This being
accomplished, healing by prayer was no
longer necessary. Eminent divines in all
churches, and we think Christians in
every denomination, through strange and
faulty reasoning have arrived at this
conclusion:--that spiritual healing was
merely an impressive method used to make
people understand the new dispensation,
and that after this had been
accomplished, there would be no longer
any need for its continuance.
In fact, it
seems to me that we sometimes imagine
Christianity to have been ushered in by
the use of magic; that in order to [69]
gather an audience, Jesus had to indulge
in a few spectacular performances. That
is the idea that many of us have of the
healing ministry of Jesus.
It never
seems to us that back of every healing
recorded by the Nazarene, there is a law.
We seem to feel that in some strange and
supernatural way this unusual Son of God
was gifted with a power that no other man
in human history has ever had, to such an
extent, at least.
Divine
Science has come to take the very marked
human instinct to pray, out of the
external and the occasional and to plant
it in the soil of beautiful expectancy.
We speak of the instinct of prayer and of
man as a praying animal. We seem to
differentiate ourselves from the beasts
by this particular instinct, the instinct
of prayer. We say we have it and the
animals have it not. We share one
instinct in common with all animal and
vegetable life, and that is the instinct
of self-preservation; and we feel that
self-preservation, so far as the human
being is concerned, is daily dependent
[70] upon prayer and the prayerful
attitude of man.
And yet when
we look out over the world and hear of
the innumerable prayers going up for
health, strength, harmony and substance,
we are prone to think prayer is too
infrequently answered. How often have we
seen an entire nation setting apart a day
for itself to pray for the life of a
beloved ruler or president; and yet he
passed on like any other man,
notwithstanding the fact that the
accumulated prayers of the nation were
piled up for his recovery. We in this
country see this too often. Then over
against this it does seem as though the
bad man’s bullet is more powerful
than the good man’s prayers. It
does seem as if the assassin has more
power to rid the earth of a good man than
the accumulated prayers of all the
Christians have to keep him here. These
questions should give us pause, we
think.
Was there
ever at any time in the history [71] of
the human mind, a firm belief in the
potency of prayer? Was there ever at any
time on the part of men a sure confidence
that their prayers would indeed be heard?
Why should our prayers be so infrequently
answered, and why should the prayers of
Jesus and his immediate disciples have
been so frequently answered? The question
is, Did Jesus pray differently? Were the
prayers of Jesus based upon a different
premise from our own prayers?
You remember
when John the Baptist’s disciples
came to Jesus. After John had been cast
into prison, they came to Jesus and
followed him and watched his so-called
miracles. One day they said to him,
“Master, teach us to pray as John
taught his disciples to pray.” And
then he offered up that brief and
wondrous prayer that has ever since been
called “The Lord’s
Prayer.” A prayer which we
unfortunately very poorly translated.
Toward the end of the prayer, it reads as
if Jesus had asked his Heavenly Father
not to lead him [72] into temptation. You
remember that it reads “Lead us not
into temptation, but deliver us from
evil.” These are the words as they
appear in the ordinary version. They are
not so in the original text: they are,
“Leave us not in temptation, but
deliver us from the one evil.”
There does not seem to be very much
difference, but on reflection we see that
we are not asking God “not to lead
us into temptation.” The temptation
is not from God; the temptation is from
other sources, other causes, and comes
mainly from within ourselves.
“Leave us not in temptation, but
deliver us from the one evil”
became translated into a personal devil,
and later into an impersonal evil. What
is this one evil? The one evil is
man’s belief in evil. The
evil of believing in a power opposed to
the omnipotence of God, the evil of
believing in a personal devil, or an
impersonal evil. In short, it is the one
evil of believing anything that is not
truth. It is the belief in a supposed
power pressing [73] ever against the
actual power and presence of Almighty
God, and hence we can say with Jesus,
“Leave us not in temptation, but
deliver us from the one
evil,”--deliver us from the
temptation to believe that there is
anything but God. This belief is the seed
and the root upon which the tree that
bears such wretched fruit flourishes.
We see a
difference between the prayers of Jesus
and those of John the Baptist. John the
Baptist petitions, supplicates. Jesus
affirms. And it is in this way that we
wish to speak of prayer,--that is,
positive affirmation.
When Jesus
stood at the tomb of Lazarus, and the
bereaved sisters of Lazarus, Martha and
Mary, were weeping and bemoaning the fact
that Jesus had not come earlier, feeling
confident that had he come earlier their
brother would have lived,--they said, "If
thou hadst been here, my brother had not
died." And he turned unto them and said,
"Said I not unto thee, he that believeth
in me, though he be dead, yet shall he
live?" And Martha said, "Yea, I know [74]
that he shall rise again in the
resurrection, at the last day.” It
seems to be a peculiar tendency of the
human mind to postpone everything to the
resurrection day, the last day, the
judgment day. And Jesus turned to Martha
and said, “I am the resurrection
and the life. He that believeth in me,
though he were dead, yet shall he
live.” And then he said,
“Father, I thank thee that thou
hast heard me, and I know that thou
hearest me always; but because of the
people which stand by, I said it, that
they may believe that thou hast sent
me.” I say, “Lazarus, come
forth.” And history records that
Lazarus came forth bound hand and foot,
and with the grave clothes about his
eyes.
Jesus
adopted a method the very reverse of that
which we adopt. He thanked God in advance
for his blessings. We would have waited
to see Lazarus out of the tomb and the
bandages removed from his ankles and his
eyes, in order to be convinced that truth
had manifested itself. Jesus says,
“Whatsoever things ye desire when
ye pray, [75] believe that ye receive
them, and ye shall have them." For this
text I never found any satisfactory
explanation in Old Thought. When I pray,
I am to believe that I receive what I
desire. Why pray then? Why pray if I
believe that I have already received what
I desire? In the Old Testament we read,
"Before they call I will answer; and
while they are yet speaking, I will
hear." These are mystical statements.
Jesus spoke in parables, and here are the
parables of Jesus with no convenient
Jesus to interpret them. But Divine
Science is penetrating beneath the
surface of these marvelous words of the
Master and discovering in some degree at
least their hidden content. In Old
Thought we pray for blessings to a
far-away God, which blessings are to be
imported to us from a place outside of
ourselves, a far-away heaven. We beseech
God to be merciful, tender and
compassionate, when it is not the nature
of God to be otherwise. We want God to
shower blessings on us, to give us health
and strength and wealth, always believing
that [76] these are to come from outside
of ourselves, never believing that we
have already received them as the soil
receives the seed of the oak that is to
be; never really understanding that it is
within our power to work out our own
salvation. And when I say work out, I
mean that our salvation is within;
otherwise we could not work it out. Most
of us have tried to work it in, as we
work in an oil by embrocation. What we
have to do is to work it out, to feel
conscious that within us is the power to
overcome sin, sickness, poverty, disease
and even death itself. And so it is that
we have gone on and on for centuries
praying to an absentee God to work out
our salvation for us.
In Divine
Science we no longer petition, we no
longer supplicate, but this does not mean
that we no longer pray. A young minister
once said of us that we are "a prayerless
people;" because we no longer repeat
litanies and rosaries, or make
genuflections or go through the rites and
ceremonies the older churches teach. We
are not a prayerless people, though we
are a people who no [77] longer indulge
in formulae. If he knew us better he
would not say that we are a prayerless
people, but rather that we pray without
ceasing, that we are constant in prayer,
that we are constantly affirming the
omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence
of God, for it is the affirmation of
man’s unity with his maker. And I
take it that this was the prayer of
Jesus--the deep and persistent
affirmation of man’s unity with
God.
Quite unlike
the minister of today or the rabbi of his
day, Jesus rarely knelt in prayer. We are
somewhat amazed when we read the little
narrative of the calling forth of
Lazarus, to discover that there is no
reference made to any petition
whatsoever. It is not said of Jesus that
he knelt at the tomb of Lazarus and cried
out in piteous appeal to God that he
might be restored to his sisters, to whom
he was so necessary. It is not said of
Jesus that he asked those around him to
unite with him in prayer for the
restoration of life to Lazarus. We do not
find him crying unto God to be merciful
and compassionate and tender [78] and to
restore this youth to life and vigour.
Telling Mary, “I am the
resurrection and the life, he that
believeth on me, though he were dead, yet
shall he live again,” Jesus prays,
“Father, I thank thee that thou
hast heard me,”--remember that
Lazarus was still in the
tomb,--”Father, I thank thee that
thou hast heard me. And I know that thou
hearest me always, but because of the
people which stand by I said it, that
they might believe.” Then he said,
“Lazarus, come forth.” And
Lazarus came forth. Soul answereth to
soul, spirit answereth to spirit, and
audible prayer was as far removed from
the idea of prayer in the mind of Jesus,
as the North is from the West or from the
South. We find little reference made to
audible prayer on the part of Jesus. His
prayers were those silent contemplations
of truth, those moments and hours of
silent realization of the presence of the
inworking of the Holy Spirit. The prayers
of Jesus were too big for words. They
could never be put into formulae. I think
that he would never have given out [79]
what we call "The Lord's Prayer," were it
not for the fact that his disciples asked
for a formula, as we today ask for a
formula.
People come
to us every day and ask us to give them
some thought, some verbal statement. Why?
Because it seems to be the only way by
which they can hold on to an internal
truth; to have an external affirmation
for it, an audible repetition of the
words seems to be the one thing by which
they can anchor to the thing they most
desire to bring out. So Jesus gave them
this simple prayer, "Our Father which art
in heaven," and we must remember that
Jesus had told his disciples where heaven
is. He had told them that the kingdom of
heaven is within. Now you know that the
natural tendency of the twentieth century
denominational Christian when making that
prayer is to think of something far away,
"Our Father which art in heaven:" rarely
if ever does he associate in his own mind
with this remarkable statement the idea
of omnipresence. "Our Father which art in
heaven"-- [80] Our Father which art away
off, “hallowed be thy name; thy
kingdom come,” and he asks that
this kingdom come as if it were some
strange importation from another planet.
“Thy kingdom come”--thy
kingdom which is ever resident in the
secret sanctuary, hidden in every longing
soul, to be manifested in the external,
in our daily life. Thy will be done in
the objective kingdom even as it is in
the subjective kingdom.
“Give
us this day our daily bread”--give
us strength and wisdom and understanding
for the day. This has no reference
whatsoever to food. “And forgive us
our sins as we forgive those that sin
against us.” So underneath all we
are to be forgiven as we forgive others.
“Forgive us our trespasses as we
forgive.” We are to be forgiven as
wholly and just in proportion as we
forgive other men. That is the law. We
forgive ourselves in reality in the
degree that we become forgiving.
“And
lead us not into
temptation,”--leave us not in
temptation, but deliver us [81] from the
one evil,--from the belief that there is
anything opposed to the law of God. This
is not a very profound interpretation of
the Lord’s prayer, but it is better
to my mind than the other. The other was
a prayer of postponement. The other was a
prayer that led me to feel in some
strange, inconceivable way, God was
really leading me into temptation in
order that my spiritual muscles might be
strengthened. Over against this we have
those remarkable words of James the
Apostle. “Let no man say when he is
tempted, I am tempted of God; for God
cannot be tempted with evil, neither
tempteth he any man: But every man is
tempted when he is drawn away of his own
lust, and enticed.” “Then
when lust hath conceived it bringeth
forth sin; and sin, when it is finished,
bringeth forth death.” “God
tempteth no man.” Then why ask God
not to lead us into temptation? What
would you think of your own child if he
begged you every day, Please don’t
lead me into temptation, Father or
Mother? You, who are desirous only for
his spiritual, [82] mental, moral and
physical welfare? What would you think if
your child made continually, morning,
noon and night, requests that you would
not lead him into temptation? You would
wonder if he were not a little bit
touched! You have no desire to do
anything but lead him into joy and
happiness and strength and vigour and
manliness. Is it not amazing that for all
these centuries we have been asking God
not to lead us into temptation? Is it not
amazing that we have accepted the blind
dictums of theological leaders without
question? The blind surely have led the
blind. Our teachers have been blind to
the truth.
Prayer with
us in Divine Science is not petition. It
is not asking God to be God. It is not
asking Infinite Life to be anything other
than what It is. It is not asking God to
do that which he cannot do, namely:
change his mind. And is this not prayer
as it was taught in Old Thought--an
almost continuous performance of asking
God to change his mind? I was taught that
many things came into my life as a direct
result [83] of the will of God, and then
I was taught to ask God to remove these
things or to change them, and I always
ended my prayer with "if it be thy will,
O God." This was because I did not
understand what Jesus taught concerning
the will of God. It was because I did not
understand concerning prayer. I was
taught to believe that through continuous
and continual prayer, I could change the
unchangeable will of the Almighty. That
if he deemed it wise and best for me to
be diseased and sickly and sorrowful and
suffering, I could by sufficient prayer,
and sometimes by asking the prayers of
the church, bring about a change in this
supreme immutable will, and that which
God originally intended to do, he would
not do. Is it not ridiculous that we
should be taught in theology that God is
immutable, and that we should, at the
same time, think or believe, and even
communicate to others the idea that the
immutable can be changed by persistent
petition, when the very Bible says, "God
changeth not." God is law; immutable,
fixed, irrevocable [84] law. Not all the
petitions ever uttered can change the
will of God; but we must know what is the
will of God. Some of us have been told,
I, for instance, that it was the will of
God that my child should be taken from
me, and I accepted and believed it. I was
a firm believer in ecclesiastical
authority. I believed almost everything.
Why? Because I had been taught when a
child not to argue concerning the
mysteries of the church. That if certain
things happened too deep for my shallow
mind to understand, I must accept them
and the riddle would be solved some time,
perhaps after death. I was told that my
child was taken away from me to teach me
a lesson; it was the will of God. I am
not the only one who has been told this
story. And then one day I found in the
New Testament these words of Jesus, and I
could not reconcile them with my previous
teaching; --“It is not the will of
God that one of those little ones should
perish, but that they should have
everlasting life.” I have no doubt
that the theologians of that day believed
that it was [85] the will of God that
Bartimeus should have been born and
remained blind. Consider for a moment
that Jesus came here expressly to do the
will of the Father; this is what he said,
“I came to do the will of my Father
which is in heaven,” and when
Bartimeus there by the roadside cried out
to him, “Jesus of Nazareth, save
me,” the disciples said, “You
are making too much noise, he has other
important work to do, don’t bother
him.” And he cried out the more,
“Jesus of Nazareth, save me.”
And Jesus stopped short and said to his
disciples, “What does he
want?” They answered, “He is
crying out to thee, he is blind.”
So Jesus turned back and asked the man,
“What would you have me to
do?” Bartimeus replied, “That
I receive my sight.” Jesus said,
“Go thy way, realize that God is
the sight of your eyes, and you have it.
It is yourself.” He did not pray
God to restore sight. He simply showed
the man inwardly, by spiritual contact,
that he was then manifesting that sight,
that inner sight, which is the sight of
God, and he saw. Now if Bartimeus was
[86] blind according to the will of God,
and Jesus came to do the will of his
Father, is it not strange that Jesus
should revoke that which is so popularly
believed to be the will of God? And
again, if it be the will of God that you
and I should be sick, what right have we
to pray about it at all? Why petition God
for recovery or restoration to health and
strength when perhaps it is his will that
we should be weak and debilitated? I
never saw the absurdity of these things,
I never saw the ridiculous incongruity of
them until I began to study along these
lines and saw that the will of God is not
a mutable weather cock moved about by the
petitions of people everywhere, but that
God is fixed, immutable law, and that law
is Love. So I kept praying and I never
got an answer so far as any visible
evidences were concerned. And this
history is not peculiar to myself, I am
sure. Is it not common experience? How
are we going to solve this difficulty? Is
it possible that we, like the disciples
of old, are going to turn to him and say,
“Lord, teach us to pray?”
[87] We, who have prayed from our infancy
up, are going to ask to be taught to pray
in such a manner as to receive the
blessings that were promised to him that
prayed righteously. We must become as
little children, and learn all over
again. As a little child I was taught to
pray at night, so were you,-
"Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray thee, Lord, my soul to
keep.
If I should die before I wake,
I pray thee, Lord, my soul to take."
That gave me
a picture of a God that was going to
snatch me perhaps during the night, and
sometimes I did not sleep for fear of it.
That was the Old Thought. The New Thought
is this:
“Now I lay me down to
sleep,
I know that God his child doth
keep.
I know that God, my life, is
nigh;
I live in Him and cannot die.
God is my health, I can’t be
sick.
God is all love, unfailing,
quick.
[88] God is my all. I know no
fear,
Since life and truth and love are
here.”
My dear
friends, this is a brief way of defining
the difference between the Old and New
Thought prayer. One is the supplicating,
petitioning kind, which asks God not to
do something to us which he has no idea
of doing; the other is the same, strong
affirmation of the great triumphant fact
that God is our life and we cannot die,
that God is our health and we cannot be
sick. It is the assertion of the real
over against the apparent. It is the
affirmation of our indissoluable
connection with all that is good and pure
and permanent and changeless. It is a
different order of prayer, and it is more
gratifying.
Now the
question arises naturally, and often
occurs to people who come to us for
help,--“If this is effectual
prayer, why cannot I pray for myself and
get well?” How often we hear this!
I have no doubt the people of
Jesus’ time asked the same
questions. “If the only method by
which Jesus [89] restored the sick is the
method of prayer, why cannot we pray just
as well as he?” He never objected
to it. I have no doubt he said,
“You can. You can if you pray
intelligently.” The only difference
between our prayers of today and our
prayers of yesterday is the difference
between intelligence and ignorance.
All down the
ages we have lived and moved and breathed
in an ocean of infinite Life and Love and
Truth, and have not been able to convert
it into concrete manifestation. Jesus
took the invisible, utilized it and
brought about visible results. We admit
that God is everywhere, and then pray to
him as if he were really afar off, and
not here at all. We are twisted.
James, the
Apostle, says: “A double minded man
is unstable in all his ways. Let not that
man think that he shall receive anything
of the Lord.” What does he mean by
“double minded?” Perhaps you
have read it a thousand times--most of
you more than that, and what is the
meaning that these words convey to you?
“A double minded [90] man is
unstable in all his ways. Let not that
man think that he shall receive anything
of the Lord.” No; so long as he is
double minded, he will get no results. We
are double minded if on one hand we
believe in the omnipotence of God, and on
the other hand we believe in the potency
of evil. We are not single minded. We do
not realize in our silent prayer that
there is no potent influence in the
universe other than the Holy Spirit of
Infinite Life. We pray to be protected
from the hate of one, the envy of
another, the jealousy of men. We admit
with our minds a thousand things that
have no place and no power in the
Infinite. We are not only double minded,
but multiple minded. It is only the
single minded man who is promised that
his prayers shall be heard. “The
effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous
man availeth much,” says the Bible.
“The effectual, fervent prayer of a
righteous man.” A righteous man is
a man who thinks right, and a man who
thinks right is a man who admits there is
but one supreme power in the universe,
but one real [91] actual presence in the
universe, and holds to that in spite of
all appearances; and he affirms
constantly, "There is nothing here but
God, Good."
I know
appearances are dead against us. But so
it is in the world of astronomy. We say
that the earth revolves upon its axis and
that this disproves the assumption of a
rising and a setting sun, a moving sun. I
am stating an astronomical fact, but my
senses will not corroborate it. The
profoundest astronomers in the world see
the sun coming up and see it going down
with their eyes, but their reason
corrects the notion that it moves. "To
the eye of vulgar logic" there is a
rising and a setting sun. In the realm of
"pure reason" there is no such thing. We
are called upon to cling hard to the
fact. "When your reason and your senses
conflict, cling unto your reason," says
the wise man. You do so in every other
department of investigation, why not in
the Science of Spiritual
investigation?
If Jesus had
admitted the reality, the unchangeability
of the withered arm, do you [92] suppose
he could have cured it? Jesus saw with
the inner eye what the senses of man can
never reveal. He saw the perfectness of
the man as an idea in the Divine Mind,
and this equipped him with power from on
high to bring about so-called miracles.
But they were not miracles at all. He was
not setting aside any law; he was
co-operating with and demonstrating the
law. If by miracle we mean the setting
aside of law, there is no such thing. If
by miracle we mean the evolving from
within ourselves of a divine Principle,
of an ever-present force or energy or
law, then there is a miracle. Jesus
merely utilized what other men had lived
and moved and breathed in; he utilized
God. That is what Edison is doing today.
He is utilizing that which we have lived
and moved and breathed and been carried
about in--God. The senses bear no more
testimony to electrical energy than they
give to the presence of God. Is this any
reason for denying the presence of
electrical energy in the universe? Not at
all. Then are we justified in denying the
presence and [93] power of God simply
because we cannot see his presence with
the physical eye? No. Does Edison
petition electrical energy to manifest
itself as light and heat and motive
power? Not at all; he is too wise for
that. He finds out the laws of
electricity. He finds out the means by
which this unseen and invisible force can
be converted into seen and visible
results. These are the prayers of Edison.
Wonderful prayers. He has blessed the
world with them.
We do not
petition the Principle of Being; we
simply learn its laws and co-operate with
them and manifest our God-given dominion
over our sense of limitation. Our
privations are transmuted into
privileges, and our difficulties become
opportunities. We affirm "I am one with
thee, O God!" with all it implies.
“I am one with thee, O God, the
Principle of life and happiness, truth
and power. I am one with thee, O
Principle of Life! I am one with eternal
Life!" You, too, can say with Jesus, "I
and the Father are one." The effect and
its causes are inseparable. "Nerve me, O
[94] God," says Emerson, "with ceaseless
affirmation of my divinity." These are
our constant prayers. We are "Instant in
prayer." Whenever temptation arises to
suggest that we are mere mortals, subject
to mortal law, so-called, subject to
finite limitation, then we are nerved to
ceaseless affirmation, to our oneness
with God. We do not raise our hats or
kneel in the streets or in the churches,
but is this any reason for asserting that
we are a prayerless people? Oh, Jesus was
wise! He said to men, to the people, "Ye
pray that ye may be heard of men,"--then,
turning to his disciples, he said, "Don't
you pray that way. When you pray, enter
into your closet, into the secret
sanctuary of your own souls, and when you
have shut the door--closed your senses by
becoming conscious of the omnipresence of
God, pray to that inner Principle of
Being that reposes at the very center of
yourself, and your Father which seeth in
secret shall reward you openly." That
which took place in secret will presently
be seen in the visible. If you want [95]
health, believe that health is the
constant, persistent state of your being,
and presently you shall manifest it in
your body, but you will never manifest it
in your body so long as you believe in an
importation from without. So long as you
believe that you have not got it, and
call upon God to give it to you by some
strange external method, just so long
will you never get it. But at once
realize that it is within you, bubbling
up like a well of life, once realize that
it is your natural normal state, given
you by God and sustained by the law of
God, and then you will begin to say,
“I am well, I am strong with the
strength of the Holy Spirit;” and
you will become stronger through your
affirmation of God’s truth. These
are your prayers--affirmations of
truth.
Take two
boys out in the world; one with nothing
but will power, and the other with
nothing but prayer and no will power,
which will succeed? Think you all the
prayer in the world can make a musician?
or an electrician, or a mechanical
engineer? It takes prayer plus
performance, and performance [96] is
always based upon affirmation--“I
am, I can." These are the prayers in
Divine Science. They are the moral
affirmations of our divine
possibilities.
Let us
affirm our divinity. Let us pray without
ceasing. Let us daily affirm our
spirituality, our strength, our life, our
power to succeed. Let us not exist in the
sense of limitation, but rise above it,
rise above it by the all-conquering
consciousness of our unity with God.
Chapter
5
* * * * *
New Thoughts on Old
Doctrines
Table of
Contents
(Formerly at
Northwoods Divine Science Resource
Center)
