Article July 19, 1941 Issue

Faith, Understanding, Love

Lyman S. Abbott

For centuries mankind has sought in matter for a panacea for all the ills of the flesh. It has sought in vain because the remedy for human ills is not to be found in matter. Announcement of the finding of a new remedy for some so-called incurable disease has brought both hope and despair to sufferers—hope that at last a cure has been found, and despair when the new remedy has not brought the desired freedom. To such suffering ones the first sentence in the first chapter of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, brings joy, gratitude, and healing. This sentence reads (p. 1), "The prayer that reforms the sinner and heals the sick is an absolute faith that all things are possible to God,—a spiritual understanding of Him, an unselfed love." In this short sentence we find the threefold conditions which must be expressed in healing prayer—absolute faith, spiritual understanding, and unselfed love.

Upon reading the Christian Science textbook for the first time one may ask, "How can I gain that absolute faith, spiritual understanding, and unselfed love so necessary if I am to have my freedom?" It may be answered that these are acquired as one's consciousness becomes receptive to the spiritual ideas which unfold as one reads and studies the Bible with the aid of the Christian Science textbook.

Absolute faith is a concomitant of spiritual understanding and is inseparable from it. While blind faith may be helpful when one first turns from material remedies to spiritual means for healing, it is not enough to carry one through all the trials with which one may be confronted. Absolute faith comes from a knowledge of divine Love's presence and power, the certainty that God's will for men is freedom, health, and wholeness. This is the understanding faith that makes potent the healing prayer.

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