Article October 13, 1951 ISSUE

"THE SUBSTANCE OF THINGS HOPED FOR"

WILLIAM MILFORD CORRELL

Humanity is always hoping for something. It hopes for peace, it hopes for prosperity, it hopes for health and companionship. If this hope is directed toward Deity, we label this desire prayer. Yet many prayers are unanswered and hopes frustrated because of the lack of understanding of how to pray and what to pray for. Therefore it was quite natural for Mary Baker Eddy to open the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," with a chapter on prayer, for that subject is one of universal appeal to mankind. The first statement in this chapter 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."

The writer of the epistle to the Hebrews states (11:1), "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." One might define faith as the acknowledgment or inward acceptance of something as true. If this acceptance is based on the realities of God, it is termed spiritual understanding, and in Christian Science this is known to be "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."

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