The writer of the article on Christian Science, in a recent issue, has embarked on a criticism of Christian Science teaching which is dependent entirely on an understanding of the meaning to be applied to the word faith. Huxley once declared that it was probably impossible to agree to an acceptable definition of the word religion, on the ground that no two people hardly would agree to each other's definitions. It is not too much to say that the word faith is almost as elusive, when it comes to a definition, as the word religion. To one man faith means believing something of which there is no proof, while to another, faith is based on at least some degree of evidence. Among the former may be classed St. Gregory, with his famous declaration that there is no faith in accepting a conclusion of which satisfactory evidence has been given; among the latter, St. Paul, with his even more famous declaration that faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

It is, however, this very absence of any scientific terminology that has made religion such a hopeless battleground of sects. Yet, religion, if it is anything at all, it the expression of man's belief in the absolute, and so religious controversy should be as capable of being conducted on scientific lines as any controversy over the deductions of natural science. It was this very point which was so evident to Mrs. Eddy, and it led to her use of the term, Christian Science, a term which can be easily justified out of the pages of the New Testament, since in those pages we have the phrase translated "knowledge of God" which should admittedly be translated "full, exact, or scientific knowledge" of God, and so of Truth.

The question, therefore, naturally arises as to whether the word faith has not a definite meaning in the Bible. It becomes important, consequently, to learn exactly what significance the word, as used by Jesus, would have had to the crowds to whom he preached, and it so happens that we have in the writings of Philo, himself a Jew of the first century, and a contemporary of Jesus, some means of forming an opinion. One of the ablest of modern commentators on the Johannine writings has pointed out the inadequacy of the Greek language to convey the moral significance of the Hebrew verb to trust, using as an example the well-known passage in Isaiah, "If ye will not believe, surely ye shall not be established," which more literally means, "If ye be not firm, ye shall not be made firm."

This is exactly what Mrs. Eddy has pointed out, on page 23 of Science and Health, where she says, "The Hebrew verb to believe means also to be firm or to be constant." That this firmness meant something much more to the Jews than the mere blind faith of St. Gregory is perfectly certain. That they made use of the characters and stories of the Old Testament as symbols for the conveyance of spiritual truths is undeniable, and so Philo works out the Jewish view of faith by just these means. "Abraham," says Philo, "saw the unfixedness and unsettledness of material being when he recognized the unfaltering stability that attends true being, to which stability he is said to have completely trusted;" and from this he goes on to explain that there is "nothing so difficult or so righteous as to anchor oneself firmly and unchangeably upon true being alone," which, in its essence, of course, is the grasp of spiritual causation. Further on he says that "the only good thing that is void of falsehood and stable is the faith toward God or the faith toward true being," and this faith he calls knowledge. "Wherefore," he continues, "Abraham is said to have been the first to have trusted God, since he was the first to have an unaltering and stable conception how that there exists one cause, the highest, providing for the world and all things therein."

On page 579 of Science and Health Mrs. Eddy defines Abraham as "fidelity; faith in the divine Life and in the eternal Principle of being. This patriarch illustrated the purpose of Love to create trust in good, and showed the life-preserving power of spiritual understanding." Faith, it follows from this, as understood by Philo and as explained by Mrs. Eddy, is the perception of spiritual causation, or, to return to the writer of the Hebrews, "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."

"Until belief becomes faith," Mrs. Eddy writes, on page 297 of Science and Health, "and faith becomes spiritual understanding, human thought has little relation to the actual or divine." It will be seen, therefore, that in Christian Science faith is the connecting link between belief and spiritual understanding. In the famous eighth chapter of John, the evangelist explains, though the distinction is unfortunately lost in the translation, the difference of merely believing his words (believing him), and having faith in his statements (believing on him). Discipleship, it is here shown, begins in belief, broadens into faith, and finally develops in spiritual understanding. Faith, then, is something more than mere belief, something verging on understanding.

When Jesus first called his disciples they believed him, but after the performance of the first miracle they believed on him, or had faith in his teaching. The mere act of believing had been deepened by his teaching, and by the performance of the miracles, which were themselves the object-lessons or demonstrations of the truth of his teaching, into a faith in his and their ability to work the greater miracles. The beginner in any study first accepts the theory as a reasonable working hypothesis. As he further develops his inquiries, and makes his first demonstrations, his belief changes into a faith in the possibilities of the study before him,until, as his understanding of the subject grows deeper and deeper, he includes in his demonstration more and more convincing proofs that what he once accepted as a theory is an actual fact. Then he knows. "Ye shall know the truth," Jesus said, "and the truth shall make you free."