Naomi Price, C.S., of London, England
Member of the Board of Lectureship of The Mother
Church,
The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts
"There is no incurable disease," a Christian Science lecturer said Saturday in a lecture at the First Church of Christ, Scientist.
Naomi Price of London, England, told the audience that "whatever the discord of mind or body, it can be healed through prayer."
She described prayer as a "divinely mental operation" — as "the reformation or regeneration of thought in which man's true nature in God's likeness appears."
Mrs. Price is a member of The Christian Science Board of Lectureship.
"The Lord's Prayer covers all human needs," Mrs. Price declared. "It turns thought to the acknowledgment and praise of God as the one creator and lawgiver" — as "eternal Life, infinite Love, the Father and Mother of all."
"The effect of this acknowledgment," she said, "is not only to enlighten erring human thought but to purify."
"The Bible tells us (James 1:17): 'Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning,'" she noted.
Emphasizing the Christian Science view that evil is not any part of "God's divine plan," the lecturer declared that all evil is therefore basically an illusion, which is destroyed "through the understanding and activity of the Christ, Truth."
This activity takes place through prayer, she said.
"Prayer is first of all the spiritual realization of God's glorious nature, — the acknowledgment of His allness and His perfect law.
"Then, it humbly acknowledges that man, God's manifestation or child, is also perfect in His image, . . . spiritual and complete."
Such prayer lets in "the light of Christ," — washing away "the fears, illusions and sinful tendencies which constitute the carnal mind."
This is how Christian Science healing takes place, Mrs. Price explained. It includes not only the overcoming of sin and unhappiness, but the cure of what are sometimes considered hopeless cases of disease.
[She told of how healing came to a six-year-old boy medically diagnosed as hopelessly ill with meningitis. One of the parents went in desperation to a Christian Science practitioner. After turning the man's thoughts "away from matter," the practitioner "told him that in truth God is the Father and Mother, the one divine creator of the child, and showed him how to place his faith in God's tender care for all His children." The boy awoke from a three-day coma that same afternoon. The parents then began to rely completely on Christian Science treatment, and within three or four weeks the child was walking, the lecturer said. "By the end of another month complete normality was restored" and the boy was climbing ladders tirelessly in the full swing of cherry-picking season.
[Such healing is not really "miraculous," she said, because "it is perfectly in accord with divine law."
[She quoted this explanation by Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science: "The physical healing of Christian Science results now, as in Jesus' time, from the operation of divine Principle, before which sin and disease lose their reality in human consciousness and disappear as naturally and as necessarily as darkness gives place to light and sin to reformation" (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. xi).]
Another result of this mental activity is happiness, Mrs. Price said. "Happiness is spiritual. It is the gift of God."
She described happiness as "the love of life," and a life of love.
"If anyone is tempted to feel he does not love living — looking forward with joy to the dawning of each new day — then get to know God better as divine Love and man as His expression," the lecturer urged.
"We must demonstrate our unity with God by letting the divine Spirit appear in every thought and deed — by expressing Love's qualities in our every thought about others."
"In his time Christ Jesus made people happy," she noted. "He healed and helped multitudes, and much of his teaching was devoted to instruction as to how happiness is to be gained . . .
"Our work for the world is first to establish the government of divine law in our own lives by keeping the commandments and obeying the Golden Rule of love. This endows the individual with spiritual strength and bestows upon him divine power to help others."
In ways such as this, she indicated, the world is experiencing the touch of "the Comforter, the Spirit of truth, which is bringing health and happiness to mankind."
[Delivered June 15, 1963, at First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Jamestown, New York, and published in The Jamestown Post-Journal, of Jamestown, New York, June 17, 1963. The bracketed material was taken from a summary of the lecture delivered the next day at the Methodist Church in Katonah, New York, under the auspices of First Church of Christ, Scientist, Katonah, and published in The Putnam County Courier, of Carmel, New York, June 20, 1963. Advertisements appearing prior to the events were sought out to obtain the lecture title, which was missing from the reports transcribed above.]