HOW SHALL WE PRAY?
Shall we say: "Father, give me this Father, do for me that!"? Or
shall we say: "Behold, I am perfect! Imperfection, sin and suffering
are only errors of mortal mind!"?
Or shall we pray: "Father, give me of Thy strength that I may live
in harmony with Thy law, for thus only will all good come to me!"?
The first way is to beg, the second, to steal, the third, to earn by
honest effort.
"Father, give me this!"--"Father do for me that!" Thus prayed our
fathers, not understanding the great law of compensation, the law of
giving and receiving, which demands that we give an equivalent for
everything we receive. To receive without giving is to beg.
The lily, in return for the nourishment it receives from the soil
and the sun, gives its beauty and fragrance. The birds of the air
give a return for their sustenance by their songs, their beauty of
plumage, and by destroying worms and insects, the enemies of plants
and men. Every living thing gives an equivalent for its existence in
some way or other.
With Man, the fulfillment of the law of service and of compensation
becomes conscious and voluntary, and his self-respect refuses to
take without giving.
"Behold, I am perfect! Imperfection, sin, and suffering are only
errors of mortal mind!" Such is the prayer of certain metaphysical
healers.
To assume the possession of goodness and perfection without an
earnest effort to develop and to deserve these qualities, means to
steal the glory of the only Perfect One. The assumption of present
perfection precludes the necessity of striving and laboring for its
attainment. If I am already all goodness, all love, all wisdom, and
all power, what remains for me to strive for?
Herein lies the danger of metaphysical idealism. While it may dispel
pessimism, fear, and anxiety, it inevitably weakens the will power
and the capacity for self-help and personal effort.
The ideal of the metaphysician is the ideal of the animal. The
animal does not worry about right or wrong, nor, with few
exceptions, does it make provision for the future. Its care and
forethought extend only to the next meal. But this perfect, ideal,
passive trust in Nature's bounty causes the animal to remain animal
and prevents its rising above the narrow limitations of habit and
instinct.
The inherent faculties, capacities, and powers of the human soul can
be developed only by effort and use. The savage, living in the most
favored regions of the earth, depending for his sustenance in
perfect faith and trust on Nature's never-failing bounty, has
remained savage. Through ages he has risen but little above the
level of the beasts that perish.
The great law of use ordains that those faculties and powers which
we do not develop remain in abeyance, and that those which we
possess weaken and atrophy if we fail to exercise them.
The Master, Jesus, emphasized this law of use in many of his
parables and sayings.
"For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more
abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even
that he hath."
What does this mean? Those who have the desire and the will to work
out their own salvation, acquire greater knowledge and power in
exact proportion to their well-directed efforts; but those who have
neither the desire nor the will to help themselves, lose their
natural endowments and the possibilities and opportunities which
these would have conferred upon them.
The anatomy and physiology of the human brain reveal the fact that
for every voluntary faculty, capacity, and power of body, mind, and
soul which we wish to develop, we have to create new cells and
centers in the brain. In this respect, Nature gives us no more and
no less than we deserve and work for. If we "try to cheat" by
usurping the perfection and the power which we have not honestly
earned and developed, then sometime, somewhere we shall have to
"square the balance."
The Right Way to Pray
After all, the only true prayer is personal effort and self-help.
This does not mean that we should not invoke the help of the Higher
Powers, of those who have gone before us, of the Great Friends and
Invisible Helpers, and of the Great Father, the giver of all life,
all wisdom, and all power. But we should pray for strength to do our
work, not to have it done for us. The wise parent will not do for
the child the home tasks assigned him at school. Neither will the
powers on high or the Great Friends perform our allotted tasks for
us.
This life is a school for personal effort. If it were not so, life
would be meaningless. From the cradle to the grave, our days are
one continuous effort to learn, to acquire, to overcome difficulties.
Only in this way can we develop our latent faculties, capacities,
and powers. These cannot be developed by having our tasks done
for us, nor by assuming that we already know and possess everything.
The athlete must do his own training. No one else can do it for him.
The assumption of superiority over his opponent will riot develop
his suppleness of body and strength of muscle. To be sure, faith and
courage are essential to--victory, but they must be backed by
careful and persistent training. Vainglorious boasting alone will
not win the contest.
So in the battle of life, the more faith we have in God, in the
Great Friends, and in our own powers, the wider do we open ourselves
to the inflow of wisdom and strength from all that is good and true
and powerful in the universe. But through persistent and
welldirected effort alone can we control the powers and fashion the
materials which Nature has so lavishly bestowed upon us.
The creative will, actuated by desire and enlightened by reason,
brings order and harmony out of chaotic forces and materials. And
yet certain metaphysicians tell us that we ourselves must do nothing
to overcome weakness, sin, and suffering, that we must depend
entirely upon the efficiency of metaphysical formulas, that the
deity and the powers of Nature are jealous of our personal efforts,
that we must not try to help ourselves lest we forfeit their good
will.
Is it not blasphemous to assume that God would blame us and withhold
his aid because we dared to use the faculties, capacities, and
powers with which he has endowed us? You say, "Nobody is foolish
enough to claim such things." But this is the teaching of a powerful
healing-cult. Its members are forbidden, on penalty of expulsion, to
use in the treatment of human ailments the most innocent natural
remedies. The giving of an enema, or the common-sense regulation of
diet are regarded as sufficient to nullify the power of their
metaphysical formulas and to prevent the working of Nature's healing
forces.
One of our patients who had been under such treatment until she was
in a dying condition, told us afterwards that her bowels often did
not move for a week, and that, when she complained to her "healer"
about this condition and asked permission to take an enema, he
answered her: "Pay no attention. The Lord is taking care of that in
some other way."
The man who said this had been a prominent allopathic physician
before he turned "healer." He, too, like so many others ignorant of
Nature's simple laws, had swung from one extreme to the other, from
allopathic overdoing to metaphysical underdoing. In this instance,
the Lord "took care" of the patient's bowels until she was taken
down with a severe attack of appendicitis and peritonitis.
Amidst all the extremes, Nature Cure points the common-sense middle
way. Basing its teachings and its practices on a clear understanding
of the laws of health, disease, and cure, it refrains from
suppressing acute diseases with poisonous drugs or the knife,
realizing that they are in reality Nature's cleansing and healing
efforts. Neither does it sit idly by and expect the Lord, or
metaphysical formulas, or the medicine bottle and the knife, to do
our work and to make good for our violations of Nature's laws.
Understanding the Law, Nature Cure believes in cooperating with the
law; in giving the Lord a helping hand. It teaches that "God helps
him who helps himself," that He will not become angry and refuse His
help if His children use rightly the reason, the willpower, and the
self-control with which he has endowed them, so that they may
achieve their own salvation.
Nature Cure from beginning to end is one grand, true prayer. It
teaches The Law on all planes of being, the physical, the mental,
the moral, and the spiritual; and it insists that the only way to
attain perfect health of body, mind, and soul is to comply with the
law to the best of our ability. When we do that, we place ourselves
in allgnment with the constructive principle in Nature, and in exact
proportion to our intelligent and voluntary co-operation with the
laws of our being, all good things will come to us.
Therefore we pray: "Father, give me of Thy strength that I may live
in harmony with Thy law, for thus only will all good come to me."