Editorial July 9, 1927 Issue

"The shield of faith"

Ella W. Hoag

Paul spoke with great wisdom when in defining the various parts of the Christian's armor he said, "Above all," take "the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked." What a wonderful sense of safety does this picture present! The quenching of "all the fiery darts of the wicked"! No least spark of evil left to work havoc, to burn or devastate, but instead every destructive element quenched, annulled, leaving all of good untouched, unharmed! We must, however, be conscious of our possession of this shield of faith, and it must to kept in active use if deliverance from all evil is to be realized.

In his epistle to the Hebrews the writer tells us that "faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." And Christian Science explains this "substance" and these unseen things, and thus opens the door to a practical understanding of the shield of faith. It tells us that "substance" is divine Mind, which certainly includes all the "things hoped for," since it is infinite God or good. At the same time Christian Science indicates that the "things not seen" are those holy, perfect evidences of good which must inevitably be as omnipresent as the all-powerful Mind which made everything "very good" in the beginning. And all this even though these unseen good things are not evident to or discernible by the so-called material senses, which are perpetually denying the presence of good by testifying to the supposititious evidence of matter and its evil lies!

Our shield is therefore constituted of the recognition and acceptance of the infinitely good nature of God, divine Mind, and of the equally harmonious, all-glorious, and perfect nature of all His creation. Here is the substance without limit in which we can always have a faith which provides us with a shield that is indeed invincible. There can never be any exigency so great that we may not lay hold of our shield of faith and prove ourselves invulnerable to every attack of error.

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