The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-05-03
NOTABLE LECTURE
 ON CHRISTIAN SCIENCE
Continued from Ninth Page.)
wht'h may throw some 1 1cnf11i lin14 ,,r,r.,, n eratincr

Continued from Ninth Page) considerations whth may throw some useful light upon tie subject.
 The office of prayer is to change man, not to change God, or influence Gods ways or interfere with the op- eratfon of Gods eternal laws.
 When we pray alright we are com muning with the true and only God, when we pray alright our thoughts, as- pirations and emotions climb to the very highest tablelands they are cap able of reaching.
 Why should not the benefits be mani- fested in all ways, and who can pre- sume to measure or limit these bene- fits?
 Why is 1t not easily believable that in the divine relations forever existing between God and man there are eternal laws under whose constant operation prayer confers benefits, whose scope and activities no one has any basis for limiting? The Quaker poet, Whittier, wisely wrote:
 I dare not fix by mete and bound, The love and power of God,
 Explain to me why and how it is that often religious martyrs, under the in- fuence of their faith in God have shown utter inconsistencies of physi- cal agony when burned at the stake; and then, but not before, can you con sistently ask further as to the modus operandi of the prayer of faith in sav- ing the sick.
 We have no right to dispute thing because in our ignorance we are unable fully to comprehend it.
 We have no more right to deny that prayer can heal the sick, merely be- cause we fail to see just how it can be done, than we have to dispute that an acorn grows into an oak, merely because we may not be able to explain why it should not grow into a beech tree
 There is no unbelef so egotistic and stubborn as the unbelief of ignorance. The missionary finds it impossible to convince the ignorant islanders of the tropical seas where frost is unknown that water can congeal into a solid block of ice.
 The islander does not see how it can be done and so smiles in self-satisfied incredulity.
 The power of prayer has been dem onstrated in human experiences throughout history as an incontestable fact.
 Facts are better than theories-bet- ter than the theoretical unbelief of the islanders concerning ice, better than the theoretical unbelef of the skeptlc concerning the power of prayer.
 That under the operation of the ben efficient laws of divine intelligence the prayer of one person can affect anoth- CT person is likewise an incontestable fact in modern science as well as in the pages of the Bible.
 In God confideI In faith abide,
 o thou whose heart is sorely tried God is forever at thy side!
 Seek Him, no power His smile can
 hide
 Ask Him, thou wilt not be denied! Learn faith! Tn God abide!
 Sometimes the members of other Christian denominations put to us a question like this: If our prayers are unavailing in physical sickness, how can you Christian Scientists (they ask) expect us to have any faith in your prayers in like cases?
 When the apostle declared that "the prayer of faith shall save the sick he was not theorizing, but was speaking from his own knowledge of the "heal- ing of the sick" accomplished by Jesus and His followers. He spoke of things which we knew as facts, the same as you speak of facts which come under your own personal observation. So, when Christian Scientists declare that cures of physical sickness are being wrought now by following the Christ process of healing the sick, they are not theorizing, but speak from facts within their own experience. The cures to which they are testifying so abundantly all over the civilized globe are already historically and incontest- ably proven, like the cures of the era of Jesus and of the early Christians for over three hundred years after Cal vary. Let me say, at this point, that the history of man-made churchcraft throws a revealing light upon the rea- sons for the decadence of the Christian healing of the sick, from the beginning of the fourth century after Jesus
 If the Christian Science prayers are of proven efficacy in overcoming phy. sical discords, and if, on the contrary the prayers of some other Christian denominations are admitted by its members to be intellectual in like cases surely, then, it Is entirely fair to urge that those who thus pray Intellectually must somehow pray amiss, however feryent and sincere they may be. And 1t is our duty as Christians and lovers of suffering humanity to strive to dis. cover the explanation, and to strive likewise to free our minds of all bias and prejudicate opinions in making the search.
 Christian Science teaches us that wt must appeal to God as spirit, and no to any manlike God; and that we mus not appeal to a supposed God whom we regard as the author of evil in any of it's phenomena, such as sin, sickness suffering, and their like. If God bt not the author of evil and we appea to a suppositious being whom we be- lieve to be the author of evil, then it i, plain that we appeal to a being wht does not exist. I do not need to urg, that such a prayer could not be ex, pected to be effectual.
 Christian Science also teaches tha all the phenomena of evil--sin, sick ness, suffering, and their like-are nont Af., II. -,,.s