Editorial November 4, 1905 Issue

"The prayer of faith"

Annie M. Knott

It has never been denied that faith in God is an essential element of the higher nature, and yet few have had clear views as to how it is to be brought into realization and applied in the varied problems of human experience. Jesus' statements respecting faith leave no doubt as to its vital importance, and in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews, which has been named the great epic of faith, we are told that without it we cannot please God. It is readily seen that success in any human undertaking is largely dependent upon faith of some sort, but while this is well known, it is also true that the rightful significance of the word has been so obscured as to seriously lessen its value, so that many Christian people have come to speak of faith apologetically, as if it were something antipodal to reason. Victor Hugo but voices a popular sentiment when he says, "Faith dissolves under the action of fate."

Christian Science comes to restore the true sense of faith, to remind us that it is one of the fruits of Spirit, and that it cannot therefore grow in a material soil. The mortal belief which is misnamed faith ofttimes "dissolves under the action of fate" and is found to be of little or no value in the crises of human experience. It is, however, none the less true that the kind of faith which the Master exercised and commended is indispensable to our progress, and we owe our revered Leader a boundless debt of gratitude because she not only teaches what it is and how it is to be attained, but her whole career reveals what is possible to those who grasp the true sense of Jesus' words, "Have faith in God."

In our text-book we learn that we must use scientific methods if we expect scientific results, even as in chemistry it would be impossible to make a successful demonstration were any of the necessary elements lacking. A late religious thinker caught a glimpse of the necessity of science to religion when he said, "Shall a mechanical experiment succeed infallibly, and the one vital experiment of humanity remain a chance? . . . If we cannot calculate to a certainty that the forces of religion will do their work, then is religion vain."

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