In your editorial of recent date, entitled "Mind Over...

Goodwin's Weekly

In your editorial of recent date, entitled "Mind Over Matter," you pay one of the greatest tributes to the perfect faith of Christian Scientists it has ever been my pleasure to read. Will you, however, permit me to point out a difference which exists to every Christian Scientist between "belief" and perfect faith? On page 23 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," the text-book of Christian Science, its author, Mrs. Eddy, states: "Faith, if it be mere belief, is as a pendulum swinging between nothing and something, having no fixity." It is therefore evident that faith to be effective and available must be other than mere belief, and it must have fixity or stability. Christian Science teaches it is not belief but understanding, and it is necessary not merely to believe in God, but to understand God. The apostle James wrote, "Faith without works is dead," and Jesus said time and again that results would be according to the individual's faith, i.e., his understanding of God. Unquestionably Jesus proved his faith by his works, and we are commanded, "Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus." Jesus said: "I can of mine own self do nothing;" "the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works." As the necessary essential for the accomplishment of anything is the intelligence or knowledge with which to do it, the Father dwelling in Jesus must have been the divine intelligene or Mind. And this is what Christian Scientists apprehend as the Mind of Christ.

It is quite true, as you say, that we know very little about ourselves. Is it not true, also, that the average man knows little or nothing about God? Yet, in order for man to know about man, it is essential for man to know God, for did not God make man in His own image and likeness? Mrs. Eddy writes: "We know no more of man as the true divine image and likeness, than we know of God" (Science and Health, p. 258). Through constant study of the Bible Christian Scientists are gaining a more thorough knowledge of God, and they are able to demonstrate it by their dominion over all conditions of inharmony and evil.

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