Editorial February 19, 1916 Issue

"Be not faithless"

John B. Willis

In reading the story of Thomas' unbelief one is impressed with the wilfulness of his doubt, with the wretchedness of the dejection and discouragement into which it must have plunged him, and with the gentleness and pertinence of the Master's rebuke, "Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing."

The more one thinks of the matter, the more clear it becomes to him that every disabling doubt has something of this stubborn nature, and that we all have need to pray that we may have the will to believe. Faith, as generally understood, is expressive of much besides logical apprehension, namely, educated disposition, sentiment, emotion, and certainly choice. Faith not only affects the whole domain of human sense, it involves it. When the Master said, "Get thee behind me, Satan," he rebuked the entire list of material impulses and beliefs, and especially that assertive, would-be ruler among men and things known in Christian Science as the mortal I; our "one enemy," as Mrs. Eddy names it on page 10 of "Miscellaneous Writings."

No state can be more pitiful than that of a famishing man who, though having abundance of food, is wholly debarred from its enjoyment by the fact that he cannot swallow. This illustrates the condition of him who, while in possession of convincing evidence of the verity of some vital statement, is apparently unable to accept it because of inherited or educated temperamental incapacity. The incredulity or reserve of judgment which calls for logical sequences of thought, and for convincing proofs that a given proposition is true, before giving it consideration, may be said to be essential to all scientific advance, all healthful mental development. He whose thought is so undiscriminatingly hospitable as to be accessible to every vagrant theory or wind of doctrine that may come his way, is sure to revel in excitations, but he can never get anywhere, and the wise do not envy him his so-called "open-mindedness."

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