The Fundamentals
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“ prayer ” Consequently, the teachings of “Science and Health” pre clude all need and all possibility of prayer. If God is only “Principle”, one might as well pray to “the principle of mathe matics”, or to chemical affinity, or to the Constitution of the United States. There is an entire chapter devoted to “Prayer”. But it is not Christian prayer at all. Mrs. Eddy’s prayer is vir tually a soliloquy, or an attempt at auto-suggestion. And this kind of prayer, we are told, “will be answered, inasmuch as we shall put our desires into practice It may be worth while to note a few choice morsels from this chapter. “Desire is prayer,” and then by way of a f l i n g at the Christians of the world, we are informed that “the habit of pleading with Divine Mind, as one pleads with a hu man being, perpetuates the belief in God as humanly circum scribed.” Is that a fact, or a falsehood? Do Christian men and women believe as they approach their heavenly Father that He is “humanly circumscribed” ? Does such a thought ever occur to any of us who have lived in any true sense a life of prayer? Later we come upon the statement, that prayer, as under stood by the Christian people of the last 1900 years, “implies the vain supposition that we have nothing to do but ask par don, and that afterwards we shall be free to repeat the of fence.” I ask, again, is that a fact or a falsehood? The author either knew that statement to be false, or she did not. If she knew, then she meant to vilify the godly men and women who for all these generations have lifted up holy hands of prayer in the name of Christ their Lord. If she did not know, then it is evident that her chapter on prayer is a tissue of misrepresentations woven out of ignorance, and has as little value as—the remainder of the book. There is no room within the confines of Eddyism for the
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