Article April 30, 1921 Issue

Signs of the Times

with contributions from Harry F. Atwood

["Evidence"—The Christian Science Monitor, Boston, U.S.A., March 9, 1921]

Paul begins his remarkable treatise on faith in the letter to the Hebrews with the brief definition: "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Paul does not give a number of instances of persons who believed in God more or less firmly in the usual meaning of the word faith, but gives examples to illustrate his definition of it as that which furnishes proof of things not seen. Noah's faith in God as protection was made manifest in the construction and preservation of the ark. Moses' faith in divine metaphysics proved in the parting of the waters of the Red Sea the fallibility of physics. Abraham's faith in God as the only creator was evidenced in the birth of Isaac in defiance of human, so-called laws. The confidence that strength and power inhere in Spirit furnished proof in the sudden collapse of the walls of Jericho.

What was it that made possible the setting aside of every conceivable sort of visible difficulty in these and so many other instances that, as Paul says, "time would fail" to enumerate them? On page 29 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mrs. Eddy writes, "Man as the offspring of God, as the idea of Spirit, is the immortal evidence that Spirit is harmonious and man eternal." Then what personal sense interprets as a series of persons possessing unusual powers of some sort really is the steady unfoldment of man, of the immortal evidence, the eternal furnishing of proof of God's harmonious nature under all possible conditions. In reality, man is not searching for the proof that God exists and that He is good—he is himself that proof. A so-called human personality confronted by a lion's den, or the formidable task of successfully commanding the sun to stand still, might feel what he called his faith in God waver in these circumstances. But man, the offspring of God, Spirit, as apprehended by Daniel and Joshua and the others, does not believe or fear or doubt, he simply is the proof of God's power and is therefore conscious of no other power. This fact explains what occurred on the shores of the Red Sea as well as what occurred later on the shores of the Sea of Galilee.

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