Article January 2, 1932 ISSUE

Your correspondent who signs himself "Berean" in your...

Mrs. Ann P. Hewitt, Committee on Publication for the North Island of New Zealand,

Wanganui Herald

Your correspondent who signs himself "Berean" in your issue of March 26, in commenting upon my letter, correctly emphasizes the fact that faith in the patient is an asset in the work of spiritual healing. But if only those who have faith can be healed, then God's blessing is for some and not for all. Yet we read in the Bible that "God is no respecter of persons."

Many who went to Christ Jesus over nineteen hundred years ago doubtless possessed faith, as is evidenced by the wondrous works which he performed; but there must have been others who did not possess this quality of faith, and yet he healed them.

It is not enough to have faith in the laws of mathematics: to avail ourselves of them we must understand them. The Christian Science practitioners, understanding somewhat of God's law and His willingness and ability to heal and save, are often able to help those who come to them who are without faith in anything, and try Christian Science as a last resort.

People naturally gain faith when they see that the law of God does operate, and when interest is thus awakened they progress through study of this Science from faith to understanding.

In the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, we read on page 394: "Not understanding Christian Science, the sick usually have little faith in it till they feel its beneficent influence. This shows that faith is not the healer in such cases." And on page 23 she writes: "Faith, if it be mere belief, is as a pendulum swinging between nothing and something, having no fixity. Faith, advanced to spiritual understanding, is the evidence gained from Spirit, which rebukes sin of every kind and establishes the claims of God."

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