There is no more remarkable phase of all Mrs. Eddy's writings than the extraordinary manner in which, by sheer spiritual insight, she has fathomed the meanings of some of the most difficult and recondite passages in the Bible. It would be easy to quote numerous examples in which she forestalled the efforts of the higher critics working with till the advantages of centuries of research. One however, must suffice. It occurs on page 77 of "Miscellaneous Writings," where, in answering the question, "Did the salvation of the eunuch depend merely on his believing that Jesus Christ was the Son of God?" she replies, "It did; but this believing was more than faith in the fact that Jesus was the Messiah. Here the verb believe took its original meaning, namely, to be firm,— yea, to understand those great truths asserted of the Messiah: it meant to discern and consent to that infinite demand made upon the eunuch in those few words of the apostle."
Now, if anybody doubts that Mrs. Eddy was perfectly right in this, all he has to do is to consult the greatest modern authorities on either the Hebrew text of the Old Testament or the Greek of the New. One of the most famous of all modern critics dilating on the inadequacy of the Greek language to convey, in translation, the moral intention of the Hebrew writer, selects this very verb "to believe" as a test case, and goes on to insist that the passage rendered, in the Authorized Version of Isaiah, "if ye will not believe, surely ye shall not be established," would be more exact if it were read instead, "If ye be not firm, ye shall not be made firm." That the word believe, in the sense of firmness, meant something very much stronger to the Hebrew writer than a more or less casual acceptance of a statement can be shown in a hundred ways. But perhaps the best illustration may be taken from the writings of that learned philosopher of Alexandria, Philo Judaæus, if only for the reason that Philo was himself the contemporary of all the writers of the New Testament. There is, Philo contends, nothing more difficult or more scientific than for a man to anchor himself unchangeably upon pure Being; indeed, he goes on to assert, the only thing in which the thinking of the human being divorces itself from falsehood is in its faith in pure Being, which is only another way of saying real knowledge. This, of course, is reducing the argument of Philo to a microscopic point of view, but it shows how exactly right Mrs. Eddy was when she wrote, on page 297 of Science and Health: "Mortal testimony can be shaken. Until belief becomes faith, and faith becomes spiritual understanding, human thought has little relation to the actual or divine."
Skip the eighteen centuries which separate Philo from Dr. Abbott, and turn to the latter's explanation of the two phrases, "to believe on the name" and "to believe on him," and the significance of what Philo indicated, and Mrs. Eddy asserted, becomes doubly plain. To believe on the name, Dr. Abbott shows, was little more than a passive acceptance of the claim of Jesus to be the Christ. Whereas, to believe on him indicated a belief in the teaching of Jesus in its scientific exactness. Go back to the third century, and consult a famous father of the church, Origen, and you will find the same argument brought forth. And this is the very point lost in the Authorized Version of the famous eighth chapter of John, in which it is explained how Jesus won over many, as he preached to them, to this more scientific understanding of his teaching, and how in his very next breath, he addressed himself to those who had merely accepted his claim to be the Christ, and went on to explain to them that discipleship meant something very much deeper than this, that it might be summed up in the effort to abide firmly in the truth, and that, if this were accomplished, then the disciple's ability to demonstrate the truth would follow. To quote his own words. "If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."
