"He that believeth"

EDNA BROMILOW

Jesus said, "He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also." "He [not you] that believeth"! Thus, he was not addressing only those around him. Unless we are doing the works, there is no evidence that we are believing on him. Our works are the proofs that we do believe. If we do believe with certainty, we cannot help doing "the works." To deny that there is divine healing, to deny that we may do "the works," would be to repudiate the teachings of Jesus. Spiritual healing was the proof of spiritual understanding offered by Christ Jesus—the most perfectly instructed Christian Scientist who ever trod the earth.

Jesus used spiritual means in healing. He taught no other; and he said, "Go, and do thou likewise." He made spiritual healing the test. He said also, "And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils." On page 231 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mrs. Eddy writes, "If God heals not the sick, they are not healed, for no lesser power equals the infinite All-power; but God, Truth, Life, Love, does heal the sick through the prayer of the righteous."

We may think we believe, and wonder why our prayers are not answered; but proofs are proofs; and if we cannot prove or demonstrate a fact, certainly we are not sure of that fact. There is a great difference between blind belief and understanding; and because we may not have realized this, we may have been unable to do "the works." If we really understand Jesus' teachings and works, we also shall do the works that he did.

"Why are the words of Jesus more frequently cited for our instruction than are his remarkable works?" Mrs. Eddy asks on page 358 of Science and Health; and she answers this question with another: "Is it not because there are few who have gained a true knowledge of the great import to Christianity of those works?"

Now, on what are we to believe? What is the "me" on which we are to believe? Is it Jesus and his material life and blood? or is it on the Christ that he revealed to humanity, the Christ that always has been and always will be available to men in doing "the works"? Christ Jesus was the friend of all mankind. The Christ that he revealed is Truth. So, to understand the Christ in order to be able to do "the works," we must realize the allness and omnipotence of Truth and the utter unreality of matter.

"God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth," said Jesus. Since God is Spirit, He knows nothing of matter or matter's manifestations of error—sin and disease. God knows good, and good alone, and is utterly oblivious to the supposititious claims of evil. Jesus knew that God is All-in-all. If he had not known this, he could not have done the wonderful works recorded of him in the Bible. He knew that God's man is like unto God; that this man can no more sin and be sick than can God, for the image of God must always reflect God perfectly. The man of God's creating—and there is no other, since God made all—does not know, and never can know, any other state than that of perfection.

The conclusion then is, that evil in its every form is unreal. And in the understanding of the facts that God is All and that evil does not exist as reality, lies the power to do "the works." God made all that was made; and of necessity what He made is right; and what is right is good. Are sin and disease good? No! Then they cannot and do not exist as actual facts. The understanding of the allness of God, Spirit, connotes the nothingness of matter. And the realization of God's allness underlies each and every Christian Science healing.

Christ Jesus said, "Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you." "In my name"! Do we realize what this means? We must understand, without a doubt, how to ask "in my name," or we shall not reap the results, our prayers will not be answered, and we shall be unable to do "the works." "Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss." The asking "in my name" admits of no evil but means the realization of the allness of God, good. In the degree that we let this Mind be in us "which was also in Christ Jesus"—in that degree, shall we be able to reflect the healing truth.

So, then, let us remember that to do "the works" of God as Jesus did and as he told us to do, we must have the faith which is born of understanding; that, as Mrs. Eddy says on page 23 of Science and Health, "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." We must gain this faith through consecrated thinking and living, letting in the light of Truth, which always dispels the darkness of error. We may be sure that as we attain to this, we shall not "ask amiss," and right results will follow as naturally as sunshine follows storm. The spiritual understanding will have been reached which enables us to prove Jesus' words, "He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also."

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