A CASUAL visitor at a Christian Science meeting listened attentively to several testimonies of healing by the application of the word of God to the need of humanity. He then rose to his feet and said that while he believed, with the Christian Scientists, that God healed the sick, he also believed that the one receiving the blessing had his part to do in the work of healing.
It was evident that the speaker had received the impression that individual work had not been needed to bring about the improved state and condition, because the one testifying had given all the glory of the experience to God. If this were true, it would appear that blind faith had been the modus operandi; but had the critic remembered the words of James, "By works was faith made perfect ... not by faith only," he would have realized the cooperative work between divine Mind and aspiring human sense. The apostle also says, "What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he have faith, and have not works? can faith save him?"
In his letter to the Philippians, Paul told the followers of the teachings of Jesus to work out their own salvation. The Master when he was with his disciples frequently reproached them for their lack of faith and pointed out to them that works must accompany their faith. "Ye shall say," he told them upon one occasion when they had failed to heal a certain case which had been brought to them for healing,—"Ye shall say unto this mountain [of unbelief], Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you." He showed them that the power was within themselves, also the method and means of applying it. Again, Paul told the Corinthians, "Though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity [love], I am nothing." This follower of the Christ-principle, who never saw Jesus in the flesh, writes to the Colossians, "Ye are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God."
