Arizona republican., 1919-05-01

CWritten for The Christian Science
 Monitor.)
 There are a few words in the Eng fish language which, insignificant in themselves, convey ideas and couture up associations so tremendous and far reaching that they seem to epitomize all human experience. Take. for in stance, the word faith. It slips gliblv off the tongue a hundred times a day. in alf sorts of trivial connections. and yet 1t holds within it that great power which has sustained generations of martyrs, which caused the fires of the lnquisition to be lit, which sent the Pilgrim Fathers on their voyage in the Mayflower, and which has sustained every human being who has accom- plished anything permanent for the progress of the world, through all the darkness and despair inevitable to such a mission.
 It is probable that large majority out Of every hundred persons have ac- eepted the general standard of think ing and living, and have not exercised the power, even if they have had the desire, to probe into the depths of such subjects. In fact it is hardly too much to say that many people are afraid of thinking for themselves. The minor ity, however, have possibly tried to anchor 10 the Apostles great statement that faith is the substance of things hoped for, but having found no key to solution of what he really meant by that statement, they have been in chned, if not forced, to Tail back upon the other extreme as expressed by the schoolboy's answer to a question on his examination paper: Faith is the capacity to believe what you know to ! be impossible" In the cynical phil osophy of that answer, however. un- conscious it may have been, is ex- ! pressed with brutal frankness the general attitude of the multitude to- day, but brutal though it is, it is per haps more hopeful than the blind su- perstitiou Of fifty years ago. which could, and did rest quite satisfied in the attitude which said to the younger generation. My dear, there are cer- tain things we simply must believe
 That there is something vital, how ever, about faith is evident when we think of the part 1t has played in the world; how it has inspired saints l and heroes who have expressed, even ] if they have not fully understood, what 1 the writer to the Hebrews meant by 1 saying it was the substance of things l hoped for, and to revive this faith and 1 to explain it's nature so that it should ] never again be lost, is part of the mis- sion of Christian Science.
 In Science and Health CD. 29O Mrs. Eddy writes as follows: Faith is i higher and more spiritual than belief. It is a chrysalis state of human | thought, in which spiritual evidence, contradicting the testimony of material | sense, begins to appear. and Truth the eyer-present is becoming understood Human thoughts have their degrees Of | comparison. Some thoughts are better ! than others. A belief in Truth is bet ter than belief in error, but no mor- | tai testimony is founded on the divine i rock. Mortal testimony can be shaken Until belief becomes faith, and faith becomes spiritual understanding. hu- man thought has little relation to the actual or divine"
 Now, to illustrate the truth of that explanation, let anyone recall his early attempts al elementary mathematics
 For a long time the average intelligent child does his sums through a blinl reliance on. or faith in, what his teacher tells him of the rules, but after
 a time it dawns on him that he is il touch with law which will always operate. as long as he uses it in the
 right way. His faith then becomes
 understanding which can never be
 shaken
 Or, to illustrate this point further:
 The faith of the boy David who faced Goliath was wonderful, and it seems
 to have been animated by an intelli-
 gent confidence in, or understanding O., the power which was impelIing hin
 that imparted an imperturbability tC
 his bearing which was most remark able and which carried him forward
 after that experience to still greater
 attainments.
 The eleventh chapter of the Epistlt to the Hebrews makes it abun-