Editorial February 18, 1928 ISSUE

Faith and Healing

Albert F. Gilmore

OF the part which faith plays in healing mortals of their false beliefs, Mrs. Eddy has plainly spoken. She discriminates, however, between the so-called faith cures and the scientific healing which is brought about through spiritual understanding. Healing through faith may not—in fact, probably does not—include regeneration, the purification of consciousness which healing in its deepest significance implies. In describing her experience when searching for the rules of divine healing, Mrs. Eddy writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 109), "I knew the Principle of all harmonious Mind-action to be God, and that cures were produced in primitive Christian healing by holy, uplifting faith; but I must know the Science of this healing." Here our Leader recognizes faith, holy and uplifting, as an agency of healing. Apparently she was convinced that while the cures wrought by the early Christians may have restored the sense of health completely, yet they may not have resulted from the transformation of consciousness which Christianizes mankind. And so she searched for the rule and process of divine law, which heals through regeneration.

In ascribing certain healings to the operation of faith, Mrs. Eddy was following precisely in the footsteps of Christ Jesus. "According to your faith be it unto you," he said to the blind men. "And their eyes were opened." And to the woman who had suffered from an issue of blood for many years he declared, "Thy faith hath made thee whole." Even more emphatically did the Master set forth the efficacy of faith when he declared that the possession of faith even "as a grain of mustard seed" would enable its possessor to move mountains. So extraordinary is the power which Jesus ascribes to faith that we are constrained to believe it something vastly more than mere belief. Therefore, to gain the full significance of these passages, it must be recognized that the quality of faith to which he accorded such power partakes of the profound assurance which comes from full-hearted trust, from sublime confidence in God, and in divine omnipotence as the loving Father, available to destroy every false belief.

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Truth Heals
February 18, 1928
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