Editorial September 5, 1903 Issue

The True Ground of Faith

"OUR faith can never stand in a fact of history alone. The believer has access to the living Christ to-day... The Gospels do not so much verify his experience as his experience verifies the Gospels."

These recently published words by a prominent Baptist clergyman are indicative of one of the most manifest and important trends of modern religious thought. The cry "back to Christ" cannot become more significant than when it expresses dissatisfaction with historic statement as a basis of faith, and a desire to return to Jesus' simple and scientific method of demonstrating truth. To those who demanded convincing evidence of the divine authority of his teaching, he pointed to the numerous and unquestioned healings of the day, and in giving his disciples directions for determining spiritual values, he said, "by their fruits ye shall know them." Authority, traditions, doctrines, time-honored rubrics,—all were quietly ignored by this greatest and wisest of teachers in his verification of Truth, and they are certainly quite as inadequate in the twentieth century as they were in the first. The children of this world have been wiser, and the eventful progress of applied Science in the so-called physical realm evidences the advantage of that present and continuous demonstration of Truth which worldly wisdom has exacted.

In declaring that spiritual truth is competent to establish its goings, by giving immediate and unequivocal proofs of its healing power, Christian Science has taken a position which gives practical value to religious faith, which honors the teaching of Jesus, which is endorsed by both logic and common sense, and the necessity of which is being more and more generally seen.

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