Article December 8, 1917 Issue

A Sure Foundation

JOHN B. WILLIS

How frequently the spirit of restful confidence finds expression in the psalmist's references to God as a "rock," as the immovable basis of faith, assurance, and joy! In all the exigencies of temptation and distress this fact is ever recognized as the one sure thing, the eternal refuge. Thus we find him saying: "My soul, wait thou only upon God; for my expectation is from him. He only is my rock and my salvation." This also recalls the Master's words to Peter respecting that apostle's recognition of the Christ,—"Upon this rock I will build my church."

This Scripture concept of the basis of faith was recalled recently by one while standing in the presence of the famous Woolworth Building in New York. The vastness of its towering sweep at once prompted wonderment how any foundation could have been devised which would prove equal to the support of such an enormous structure. Then he was told how a great gulf had been excavated in the earth, until the mighty ledge upon whose shoulders even the Himalayas would prove but a feather's weight, was uncovered, and that upon this there was built a great steel and concrete substructure, which is unburdened even by so enormous a load, because the planet itself is supporting it.

That the architect was wise in thus looking to the beginnings of such an undertaking, goes without saying, and this common sense procedure is particularly wise with respect to the building of Christian faith. By way of its emphasis Jesus told the familiar story of the man who, digging deep, laid the foundation for his house upon a rock, and no teaching of Christian Science is more sane and significant than its insistence upon this course. Mrs. Eddy's supreme appeal to mankind might be said to be of the nature of a searching inquiry respecting the fundamental truths of being, respecting the nature of God and His universe, and man. The faith which Christian Science erects in human consciousness proves stable and permanent, because it removes the ignorance and unverified tradition which material belief has left upon practically every stretch of "good solid sense;" and having thus reached the rock of demonstrable truth, it proceeds to raise thereon a reflex of that building of God which is "eternal in the heavens."

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