MAN'S greatest need is more faith in God. Faith in the supreme Being has brought whatever of enlightenment and progress the world has enjoyed, and if there is to be more enlightenment and more progress, there must be more faith which finds a resting-place higher than the things of earth.

All do not realize that this is their greatest need. They have faith in their own ability and they believe that through the exercise of their own intelligence they are able to accomplish satisfactory results and make substantial progress. But sooner or later there comes a time when man feels he can do no more. Then does he realize how great is his need faith in God.

Because of a limited sense of God's love and power, man but feebly comprehends the meaning of the Scripture, "Now is the day of salvation." He is too apt to think of Christianity as providing a way to a future heaven, but as having little power to beget a present heaven. If he expects Christianity to do little for him in this world, he has been slow to recognize what it has already done.

Man's faith, or lack of faith, in God is the natural result of his thought of God. There is but one possible way of increasing his faith, and that is by giving him a higher concept of the supreme Being, a truer sense of the divine nature and purpose.

Tens of thousands of men and women, scattered throughout the world, representing all classes, and living in all conditions and under all circumstances, bear faithful testimony to the fact that Christian Science is teaching them the truth about God, and man made in the divine image and likeness. As the result of this teaching their faith in God's love and power to save, morally and physically, grows stronger every day. They have learned that the "effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man," avails with God in behalf of the sick as well as in behalf of the sinner. They have learned that there never comes a time when man cannot go to God "in faith, nothing wavering" and receive the help he needs.

There are few persons who believe that there comes a time in man's earthly experience when he has "sinned away the day of grace," and it is God's will for him to suffer throughout eternity. This was at one time a teaching quite generally accepted and may have been regarded as an essential element of religious faith. But the ever-increasing brightness of divine revelation has dispelled the darkness, and in the light of spiritual understanding we read that God "will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth."

The doctrine of predestination has few adherents, and the teaching of universal salvation is not regarded with the suspicion and distrust that it was a half century ago. A man's Christianity is no longer questioned, if he declares it to be his honest conviction that through God's love and mercy all will be saved.

These changes in the human thought of God and His purpose concerning man, have resulted in a more practical religion and greatly increased the spirit of brotherly love. A man has a more vital interest in his neighbor's welfare when he regards him as a child of God, and believes it is his Father's will for him to be saved, than he could possibly have if he believed that God had foreordained his neighbor to eternal punishment.

Many persons believe that the sick man has broken a material law of nature, and for this reason it is God's will for him to be sick. There are those who believe that sickness and suffering are sent of God to teach lessons that could not, or would not, be learned in any other way.

Most Christian Scientists at one time believed that sickness was in accord with the divine will, but they are now fully convinced that it is not God's will for man to be sick any more than it is His will for man to be sinful. This conviction has made possible an active faith in God's willingness to heal man's physical infirmities as well as to save him from all his sins.

Does any one believe that God is willing to save man from part of his sins but not from all of them? Why, then, should mortals doubt God's willingness to make man every whit whole, especially when sickness is largely the result of ignorance, while sin may be wilful wrongdoing? There are few who doubt God's power to heal the sick, even without the aid of material remedies; it is therefore His willingness to heal that is apparently questioned.

The man who believes that God is not willing to save him from sin is, because of this erroneous belief, unable to exercise the faith in God that is necessary to receive the divine blessing. The failure to realize his sins forgiven is due entirely to a lack of faith in God. His lack of faith is due to a false sense of God's character. God has not withheld forgiveness, but man's own error of thought has robbed him of the blessing he so much needs. He will be deprived of the blessing divine Love is ever willing to bestow, so long as his lack of faith makes it impossible for him to receive it.

The sick man who believes that God is unwilling to heal him unless he can regain his health through the use of material remedies or through obedience to material health laws, is in a mental condition not unlike that of the man who believes God is not willing to forgive his sins. His lack of faith in God's willingness to heal him is the result of his incorrect, or imperfect, concept of God. The remedy in the one case, as in the other, is to gain a higher understanding of the divine Principle of man's being.

Christian Science is supplying this human need. It is enabling man to see that his heavenly Father is indeed a God of infinite love; that He forgiveth all our iniquities and healeth all our diseases. Christian Science is increasing man's faith in God by giving him an idea of God which is at once demonstrable and in harmony with his highest and purest conception of being. To those who have approached God in fear and trembling, not knowing in whom they have believed, Christian Science says, as did Paul to the Athenians, "Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto you."

It is impossible not to have faith in that which is understood. Jesus said that to know the Truth would make free, and then he demonstrated that this freedom which comes through knowing the Truth, is a present salvation from sickness as well as from sin and the suffering it brings.

The blessings that have come through Christian Science are not so much the result of faith in God's willingness and power to do, as the result of the understanding of what He is. God is, and man lives, and moves, and has his being in God. The understanding of the scientific fact gives man a practical faith in God and teaches him to rely upon God and trust Him.

Blessings greater than have ever before enriched human experience, are in God's storehouse awaiting man's fitness to receive. That teaching which helps man to trust in the Lord instead of leaning upon his own understanding, opens wide the door of eternal harmony. The honest and conscientious student of the Christian Science text-book has not less faith in God, but more, because he has a higher and more spiritual idea of God. He knows he has not lost even an infinitesimal part of the good he had previously gained, but his sense of good has been greatly added to and quicknened. He expects Christianity to do more for him in this present time, and according to his faith, his increased spiritual understanding, he receives of the blessings of God, health, holiness, and harmony.