Editorial May 2, 1908 Issue

"ACCORDING TO THY FAITH"

John B. Willis

The teaching of Christ Jesus abounds with references to faith as necessarily antecedent to spiritual healing, and its inexcusable absence furnished the occasion of some of his severest rebukes to his disciples. The explanation and philosophy of this relation is made clear in the teaching of Christian Science, which declares that all ills and abnormities of human experience are the expression and outcome of that false material sense which right-mindedness, the spiritual understanding of true faith, casts out. To have the right concept or idea of anything is to think God's thoughts after Him, hence it is to come out of the shadow of falsity into the sunlight of Truth. It is to bring forth the flowers and fruitage of the Christ-life, to find health, happiness, and abundance of good.

All this is explicable because natural, logical, and demonstrable, and it may therefore seem the more surprising that in not a few instances Jesus healed those who were ignorant of the Christ-teaching, if not indifferent thereto. In the many cases where "multitudes" came to him, bringing their sick folk, of whom it is said, "he healed them all," it is made clear by Jesus' own words that a large proportion of them were actuated by superstitious interest in a reputed wonder-worker, and came to him simply to satisfy curiosity or to find escape from physical discomfort. They had little knowledge of his teaching, much less an understanding thereof or true faith; hence their asserted healing, as well as that of the many to-day who, according to their own testimonies, had no faith in Christian Science at the time of receiving its benefit, seems to be out of keeping with the rule and requirement which Jesus himself explicitly made, and we are therefore brought face to face with the question, How can that which is "by faith" be secured for those who assert themselves to be faithless?

In trying to answer this question we can but be sure that the word of Christ Jesus respecting the matter is yea and amen,—that there can be true and perfect healing save in the measure of our apprehension of the law of Truth, "the will of God," and our submission to it; and we must therefore say that, while the nine lepers were freed from their leprosy, the tenth alone was truly healed. No one would presume to speak dogmatically in explanation of the benefit received by a given person through Christian Science, while yet in a state of asserted unfaith, but light is thrown upon the problem when we remember that the mortal sense which registers its presence and effects in disease is a common possession, an all-enswathing fact of human consciousness; hence, when through an illumined channel a shaft of truth is projected into this body of error, the annulment of its law for those who in any sense are truly willing to be made free becomes explicable. The overflowing bounty of Love's gracious goodness is thus revealed.

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