IN a conversation with my husband last evening, a retrospective train of thought was set in motion which has suggested the material for this article.
He said, "Why do not Christian Scientists heal every disease instantaneously? If, as they say, God is the healer and He is omnipotent, it must be that they themselves lack faith; if their faith were sufficient I believe they could."
Mrs. Eddy's illustration of the mathematical problem came at once to my mind, and I said, "If you were standing before a blackboard, upon which was a complex problem that you wished to solve, would all your faith in mathematics, or all possible pleadings to the principle of mathematics, solve for you that problem or give to you that solution? No, of course not. You must have a sufficient understanding of the rules and practice of mathematics to work out the problem and gain the result. And in proportion as you have mastered the knowledge of the science of numbers will your solution be gained easily and quickly, or laboriously with much loss of time. You might have unbounded faith in the principle of mathematics to solve that and all other similar problems, but faith without works would be dead so far as the result is concerned." This illustration brought to my mind very forcibly a circumstance which affected my whole after life until my eyes were opened by that blessed book, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker G. Eddy, to whom my heart ever turns with love and gratitude.
