faith

• defined as › supreme assertion of human thought

3:5.94. Is faith—the su­preme as­ser­tion of hu­man thought—de­sir­able? Then must the mind of man find it­self in that trou­ble­some predica­ment where it ever knows less than it can be­lieve.

• effect of faith › man earns status by

3:5.16The full ap­pre­ci­a­tion of truth, beauty, and good­ness is in­her­ent in the per­fec­tion of the di­vine uni­verse. The in­hab­i­tants of the Ha­vona worlds do not re­quire the po­ten­tial of rel­a­tive value lev­els as a choice stim­u­lus; such per­fect be­ings are able to iden­tify and choose the good in the ab­sence of all con­trastive and thought-com­pelling moral sit­u­a­tions. But all such per­fect be­ings are, in moral na­ture and spir­i­tual sta­tus, what they are by virtue of the fact of ex­is­tence. They have ex­pe­ri­en­tially earned ad­vance­ment only within their in­her­ent sta­tus. Mor­tal man earns even his sta­tus as an as­cen­sion can­di­date by his own faith and hope. Ev­ery­thing di­vine which the hu­man mind grasps and the hu­man soul ac­quires is an ex­pe­ri­en­tial at­tain­ment; it is a re­al­ity of per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence and is there­fore a unique pos­ses­sion in con­trast to the in­her­ent good­ness and righ­teous­ness of the in­errant per­son­al­i­ties of Ha­vona.

• Havoners are strangers to saving f.

3:5.17The crea­tures of Ha­vona are nat­u­rally brave, but they are not coura­geous in the hu­man sense. They are in­nately kind and con­sid­er­ate, but hardly al­tru­is­tic in the hu­man way. They are ex­pec­tant of a pleas­ant fu­ture, but not hope­ful in the ex­qui­site man­ner of the trust­ing mor­tal of the un­cer­tain evo­lu­tion­ary spheres. They have faith in the sta­bil­ity of the uni­verse, but they are ut­ter strangers to that sav­ing faith whereby mor­tal man climbs from the sta­tus of an an­i­mal up to the por­tals of Par­a­dise. They love the truth, but they know noth­ing of its soul-sav­ing qual­i­ties. They are ide­al­ists, but they were born that way; they are wholly ig­no­rant of the ec­stasy of be­com­ing such by ex­hil­a­rat­ing choice. They are loyal, but they have never ex­pe­ri­enced the thrill of whole­hearted and in­tel­li­gent de­vo­tion to duty in the face of temp­ta­tion to de­fault. They are un­selfish, but they never gained such lev­els of ex­pe­ri­ence by the mag­nif­i­cent con­quest of a bel­liger­ent self. They en­joy plea­sure, but they do not com­pre­hend the sweet­ness of the plea­sure es­cape from the pain po­ten­tial.

• defined as › victory which overcomes the world

4:4.9The con­scious­ness of a vic­to­ri­ous hu­man life on earth is born of that crea­ture faith which dares to chal­lenge each re­cur­ring episode of ex­is­tence when con­fronted with the aw­ful spec­ta­cle of hu­man lim­i­ta­tions, by the un­fail­ing dec­la­ra­tion: Even if I can­not do this, there lives in me one who can and will do it, a part of the Fa­ther-Ab­so­lute of the uni­verse of uni­verses. And that is “the vic­tory which over­comes the world, even your faith.”

• progress dependent upon exercise of

19:5.12And from all this, you mor­tals, just now tak­ing your first step on the eter­nal jour­ney, can well see that you must ad­vance a long way be­fore you will pro­gress by “sight” and “ma­te­rial” as­sur­ance. You will long use faith and be de­pen­dent on rev­e­la­tion if you hope to pro­gress quickly and safely.

• effect of faith › wins perfection of purpose

26:4.14Faith has won for the as­cen­dant pil­grim a per­fec­tion of pur­pose which ad­mits the chil­dren of time to the por­tals of eter­nity. Now must the pil­grim helpers be­gin the work of de­vel­op­ing that per­fec­tion of un­der­stand­ing and that tech­nique of com­pre­hen­sion which are so in­dis­pens­able to Par­a­dise per­fec­tion of per­son­al­ity.

• exercise f. at our command

26:5.3That, then, is the pri­mary or el­e­men­tary course which con­fronts the faith-tested and much-trav­eled pil­grims of space. But long be­fore reach­ing Ha­vona, these as­cen­dant chil­dren of time have learned to feast upon un­cer­tainty, to fat­ten upon dis­ap­point­ment, to en­thuse over ap­par­ent de­feat, to in­vig­o­rate in the pres­ence of dif­fi­cul­ties, to ex­hibit in­domitable cour­age in the face of im­men­sity, and to ex­er­cise un­con­quer­able faith when con­fronted with the chal­lenge of the in­ex­pli­ca­ble. Long since, the bat­tle cry of these pil­grims be­came: “In li­ai­son with God, noth­ing—ab­so­lutely noth­ing—is im­pos­si­ble.”

• effect of faith › locates invisible Father
• warnings regarding faith › hold to Father’s presence in Creator Son

32:3.6The far­ther down the scale of life we go, the more dif­fi­cult it be­comes to lo­cate, with the eye of faith, the in­vis­i­ble Fa­ther. The lower crea­tures—and some­times even the higher per­son­al­i­ties—find it dif­fi­cult al­ways to en­vis­age the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther in his Cre­ator Sons. And so, pend­ing the time of their spir­i­tual ex­al­ta­tion, when per­fec­tion of de­vel­op­ment will en­able them to see God in per­son, they grow weary in pro­gres­sion, en­ter­tain spir­i­tual doubts, stum­ble into con­fu­sion, and thus iso­late them­selves from the pro­gres­sive spir­i­tual aims of their time and uni­verse. In this way they lose the abil­ity to see the Fa­ther when be­hold­ing the Cre­ator Son. The surest safe­guard for the crea­ture through­out the long strug­gle to at­tain the Fa­ther, dur­ing this time when in­her­ent con­di­tions make such at­tain­ment im­pos­si­ble, is tena­ciously to hold on to the truth-fact of the Fa­ther’s pres­ence in his Sons. Lit­er­ally and fig­u­ra­tively, spir­i­tu­ally and per­son­ally, the Fa­ther and the Sons are one. It is a fact: He who has seen a Cre­ator Son has seen the Fa­ther.

• defined as › fruit of the Spirit

34:6.13The con­scious­ness of the spirit dom­i­na­tion of a hu­man life is pres­ently at­tended by an in­creas­ing ex­hi­bi­tion of the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the Spirit in the life re­ac­tions of such a spirit-led mor­tal, “for the fruits of the spirit are love, joy, peace, long-suf­fer­ing, gen­tle­ness, good­ness, faith, meek­ness, and tem­per­ance.” Such spirit-guided and di­vinely il­lu­mi­nated mor­tals, while they yet tread the lowly paths of toil and in hu­man faith­ful­ness per­form the du­ties of their earthly as­sign­ments, have al­ready be­gun to dis­cern the lights of eter­nal life as they glim­mer on the far­away shores of an­other world; al­ready have they be­gun to com­pre­hend the re­al­ity of that in­spir­ing and com­fort­ing truth, “The king­dom of God is not meat and drink but righ­teous­ness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.” And through­out ev­ery trial and in the pres­ence of ev­ery hard­ship, spirit-born souls are sus­tained by that hope which tran­scends all fear be­cause the love of God is shed abroad in all hearts by the pres­ence of the di­vine Spirit.

• defined as › victory which overcomes the world

34:7.6Not­with­stand­ing this dou­ble dis­as­ter to man’s na­ture and his en­vi­ron­ment, pres­ent-day mor­tals would ex­pe­ri­ence less of this ap­par­ent war­fare be­tween the flesh and the spirit if they would en­ter the spirit king­dom, wherein the faith sons of God en­joy com­par­a­tive de­liv­er­ance from the slave-bond­age of the flesh in the en­light­ened and lib­er­at­ing ser­vice of whole­hearted de­vo­tion to do­ing the will of the Fa­ther in heaven. Je­sus showed man­kind the new way of mor­tal liv­ing whereby hu­man be­ings may very largely es­cape the dire con­se­quences of the Cali­gas­tic re­bel­lion and most ef­fec­tively com­pen­sate for the de­pri­va­tions re­sult­ing from the Adamic de­fault. “The spirit of the life of Christ Je­sus has made us free from the law of an­i­mal liv­ing and the temp­ta­tions of evil and sin.” “This is the vic­tory that over­comes the flesh, even your faith.”

• effect of faith › faint flickers sufficient for survival

40:5.19As to the chances of mor­tal sur­vival, let it be made for­ever clear: All souls of ev­ery pos­si­ble phase of mor­tal ex­is­tence will sur­vive pro­vided they man­i­fest will­ing­ness to co-op­er­ate with their in­dwelling Ad­justers and ex­hibit a de­sire to find God and to at­tain di­vine per­fec­tion, even though these de­sires be but the first faint flick­ers of the prim­i­tive com­pre­hen­sion of that “true light which lights ev­ery man who comes into the world.”

• effect of faith › makes truth of sonship with God factual in experience

40:6.41. You are sons of spir­i­tual prom­ise, faith sons; you have ac­cepted the sta­tus of son­ship. You be­lieve in the re­al­ity of your son­ship, and thus does your son­ship with God be­come eter­nally real.

• simple childlike f. is only requisite to enter kingdom

40:7.2Your own races of sur­viv­ing mor­tals be­long to this group of the as­cend­ing Sons of God. You are now plan­e­tary sons, evo­lu­tion­ary crea­tures de­rived from the Life Car­rier im­plan­ta­tions and mod­i­fied by the Adamic-life in­fu­sion, hardly yet as­cend­ing sons; but you are in­deed sons of as­cen­sion po­ten­tial—even to the high­est heights of glory and di­vin­ity at­tain­ment—and this spir­i­tual sta­tus of as­cend­ing son­ship you may at­tain by faith and by free­will co-op­er­a­tion with the spir­i­tu­al­iz­ing ac­tiv­i­ties of the in­dwelling Ad­juster. When you and your Ad­justers are fi­nally and for­ever fused, when you two are made one, even as in Christ Mi­chael the Son of God and the Son of Man are one, then in fact have you be­come the as­cend­ing sons of God.

• few persons live up to the f. they have

48:7.42. Few per­sons live up to the faith which they re­ally have. Un­rea­soned fear is a mas­ter in­tel­lec­tual fraud prac­ticed upon the evolv­ing mor­tal soul.

• warnings regarding faith › hold to Father’s presence in Creator Son

50:1.3Be­ing quite alone as rep­re­sen­ta­tives of di­vin­ity on the in­di­vid­ual plan­ets, these Sons are tested severely, and Neb­a­don has suf­fered the mis­for­tune of sev­eral re­bel­lions. In the cre­ation of the Sys­tem Sov­er­eigns and the Plan­e­tary Princes there oc­curs the per­son­al­iza­tion of a con­cept that has been get­ting far­ther and far­ther away from the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther and the Eter­nal Son, and there is an in­creas­ing dan­ger of los­ing the sense of pro­por­tion as to one’s self-im­por­tance and a greater like­li­hood of fail­ure to keep a proper grasp of the val­ues and re­la­tion­ships of the nu­mer­ous or­ders of di­vine be­ings and their gra­da­tions of au­thor­ity. That the Fa­ther is not per­son­ally pres­ent in the lo­cal uni­verse also im­poses a cer­tain test of faith and loy­alty on all these Sons.

• defined as › confidence in cosmic reliability not dependent on sight
• isolation affords opportunity to exercise f.

50:7.1On first thought it might ap­pear that Uran­tia and its as­so­ci­ated iso­lated worlds are most un­for­tu­nate in be­ing de­prived of the benef­i­cent pres­ence and in­flu­ence of such super­hu­man per­son­al­i­ties as a Plan­e­tary Prince and a Ma­te­rial Son and Daugh­ter. But iso­la­tion of these spheres af­fords their races a unique op­por­tu­nity for the ex­er­cise of faith and for the de­vel­op­ment of a pe­cu­liar qual­ity of con­fi­dence in cos­mic re­li­a­bil­ity which is not de­pen­dent on sight or any other ma­te­rial con­sid­er­a­tion. It may turn out, even­tu­ally, that mor­tal crea­tures hail­ing from the worlds quar­an­tined in con­se­quence of re­bel­lion are ex­tremely for­tu­nate. We have dis­cov­ered that such as­cend­ers are very early in­trusted with nu­mer­ous spe­cial as­sign­ments to cos­mic un­der­tak­ings where un­ques­tioned faith and sub­lime con­fi­dence are es­sen­tial to achieve­ment.

• defined as › effective armor against sin, evil spirits

53:8.8But even so, no fallen spirit ever did have the power to in­vade the minds or to ha­rass the souls of the chil­dren of God. Nei­ther Sa­tan nor Cali­gas­tia could ever touch or ap­proach the faith sons of God; faith is an ef­fec­tive ar­mor against sin and in­iq­uity. It is true: “He who is born of God keeps him­self, and the wicked one touches him not.”

• warnings regarding faith › lack of f. shown in degrees of disloyalty

89:10.2Sin must be re­de­fined as de­lib­er­ate dis­loy­alty to De­ity. There are de­grees of dis­loy­alty: the par­tial loy­alty of in­de­ci­sion; the di­vided loy­alty of con­flic­tion; the dy­ing loy­alty of in­dif­fer­ence; and the death of loy­alty ex­hib­ited in de­vo­tion to god­less ide­als.

• effect of faith › f. in disease treatment is powerful remedy

90:4.1The en­tire life of an­cient men was pro­phy­lac­tic; their re­li­gion was in no small mea­sure a tech­nique for dis­ease pre­ven­tion. And re­gard­less of the er­ror in their the­o­ries, they were whole­hearted in putting them into ef­fect; they had un­bounded faith in their meth­ods of treat­ment, and that, in it­self, is a pow­er­ful rem­edy.

90:4.2The faith re­quired to get well un­der the fool­ish min­is­tra­tions of one of these an­cient shamans was, af­ter all, not ma­te­ri­ally dif­fer­ent from that which is re­quired to ex­pe­ri­ence heal­ing at the hands of some of his later-day suc­ces­sors who en­gage in the non­sci­en­tific treat­ment of dis­ease.

• limits to prayer do not apply equally to

91:6.1Prayer, un­less in li­ai­son with the will and ac­tions of the per­sonal spir­i­tual forces and ma­te­rial super­vi­sors of a realm, can have no di­rect ef­fect upon one’s phys­i­cal en­vi­ron­ment. While there is a very def­i­nite limit to the prov­ince of the pe­ti­tions of prayer, such lim­its do not equally ap­ply to the faith of those who pray.

• warnings regarding faith › obliterate dead center of indecision

91:9.54. You must make a whole­hearted choice of the di­vine will. You must oblit­er­ate the dead cen­ter of in­de­ci­sion.

• defined as › condition of effective prayer

91:9.87. And you must have faith—liv­ing faith.

• defined as › act by which man earned God’s favor
• historically › covenant with Abraham whereby God does everything and man believes

92:4.73. Mel­chiz­e­dek of Salem. This emer­gency Son of Neb­a­don in­au­gu­rated the third rev­e­la­tion of truth on Uran­tia. The car­di­nal pre­cepts of his teach­ings were trust and faith. He taught trust in the om­nipo­tent benef­i­cence of God and pro­claimed that faith was the act by which men earned God’s fa­vor. His teach­ings grad­u­ally com­min­gled with the be­liefs and prac­tices of var­i­ous evo­lu­tion­ary re­li­gions and fi­nally de­vel­oped into those the­o­logic sys­tems pres­ent on Uran­tia at the open­ing of the first mil­len­nium af­ter Christ.

• defined as › act by which man earned God’s favor

92:5.102. Era of the Mel­chiz­e­dek mis­sion­ar­ies. Uran­tia re­li­gion was in no small mea­sure re­gen­er­ated by the ef­forts of those teach­ers who were com­mis­sioned by Ma­chi­venta Mel­chiz­e­dek when he lived and taught at Salem al­most two thou­sand years be­fore Christ. These mis­sion­ar­ies pro­claimed faith as the price of fa­vor with God, and their teach­ings, though un­pro­duc­tive of any im­me­di­ately ap­pear­ing re­li­gions, nev­er­the­less formed the foun­da­tions on which later teach­ers of truth were to build the re­li­gions of Uran­tia.

• defined as › act by which man earned God’s favor

93:4.32. I ac­cept the Mel­chiz­e­dek covenant with the Most High, which be­stows the fa­vor of God on my faith, not on sac­ri­fices and burnt of­fer­ings.

93:4.43. I prom­ise to obey the seven com­mand­ments of Mel­chiz­e­dek and to tell the good news of this covenant with the Most High to all men.

93:4.5And that was the whole of the creed of the Salem colony. But even such a short and sim­ple dec­la­ra­tion of faith was al­to­gether too much and too ad­vanced for the men of those days. They sim­ply could not grasp the idea of get­ting di­vine fa­vor for noth­ing—by faith. They were too deeply con­firmed in the be­lief that man was born un­der for­feit to the gods. Too long and too earnestly had they sac­ri­ficed and made gifts to the priests to be able to com­pre­hend the good news that sal­va­tion, di­vine fa­vor, was a free gift to all who would be­lieve in the Mel­chiz­e­dek covenant. But Abra­ham did be­lieve half­heart­edly, and even that was “counted for righ­teous­ness.”

93:4.6The seven com­mand­ments pro­mul­gated by Mel­chiz­e­dek were pat­terned along the lines of the an­cient Dala­ma­tian su­preme law and very much re­sem­bled the seven com­mands taught in the first and sec­ond Edens. These com­mands of the Salem re­li­gion were:

93:4.71. You shall not serve any God but the Most High Cre­ator of heaven and earth.

93:4.82. You shall not doubt that faith is the only re­quire­ment for eter­nal sal­va­tion.

93:6.1Abra­ham en­vis­aged the con­quest of all Ca­naan. His de­ter­mi­na­tion was only weak­ened by the fact that Mel­chiz­e­dek would not sanc­tion the un­der­tak­ing. But Abra­ham had about de­cided to em­bark upon the en­ter­prise when the thought that he had no son to suc­ceed him as ruler of this pro­posed king­dom be­gan to worry him. He ar­ranged an­other con­fer­ence with Mel­chiz­e­dek; and it was in the course of this in­ter­view that the priest of Salem, the vis­i­ble Son of God, per­suaded Abra­ham to aban­don his scheme of ma­te­rial con­quest and tem­po­ral rule in fa­vor of the spir­i­tual con­cept of the king­dom of heaven.

93:6.2Mel­chiz­e­dek ex­plained to Abra­ham the fu­til­ity of con­tend­ing with the Amor­ite con­fed­er­a­tion but made it equally clear that these back­ward clans were cer­tainly com­mit­ting sui­cide by their fool­ish prac­tices so that in a few gen­er­a­tions they would be so weak­ened that the de­scen­dants of Abra­ham, mean­while greatly in­creased, could eas­ily over­come them.

93:6.3And Mel­chiz­e­dek made a for­mal covenant with Abra­ham at Salem. Said he to Abra­ham: “Look now up to the heav­ens and num­ber the stars if you are able; so nu­mer­ous shall your seed be.” And Abra­ham be­lieved Mel­chiz­e­dek, “and it was counted to him for righ­teous­ness.” And then Mel­chiz­e­dek told Abra­ham the story of the fu­ture oc­cu­pa­tion of Ca­naan by his off­spring af­ter their so­journ in Egypt.

• defined as › act by which man earned God’s favor
• simple childlike f. is only requisite to enter kingdom

93:6.4This covenant of Mel­chiz­e­dek with Abra­ham rep­re­sents the great Uran­tian agree­ment be­tween di­vin­ity and hu­man­ity whereby God agrees to do ev­ery­thing; man only agrees to be­lieve God’s promises and fol­low his in­struc­tions. Here­to­fore it had been be­lieved that sal­va­tion could be se­cured only by works—sac­ri­fices and of­fer­ings; now, Mel­chiz­e­dek again brought to Uran­tia the good news that sal­va­tion, fa­vor with God, is to be had by faith. But this gospel of sim­ple faith in God was too ad­vanced; the Semitic tribes­men sub­se­quently pre­ferred to go back to the older sac­ri­fices and atone­ment for sin by the shed­ding of blood.

93:6.5It was not long af­ter the es­tab­lish­ment of this covenant that Isaac, the son of Abra­ham, was born in ac­cor­dance with the prom­ise of Mel­chiz­e­dek. Af­ter the birth of Isaac, Abra­ham took a very solemn at­ti­tude to­ward his covenant with Mel­chiz­e­dek, go­ing over to Salem to have it stated in writ­ing. It was at this pub­lic and for­mal ac­cep­tance of the covenant that he changed his name from Abram to Abra­ham.

93:6.6Most of the Salem be­liev­ers had prac­ticed cir­cum­ci­sion, though it had never been made oblig­a­tory by Mel­chiz­e­dek. Now Abra­ham had al­ways so op­posed cir­cum­ci­sion that on this oc­ca­sion he de­cided to sol­em­nize the event by for­mally ac­cept­ing this rite in to­ken of the rat­i­fi­ca­tion of the Salem covenant.

93:6.7It was fol­low­ing this real and pub­lic sur­ren­der of his per­sonal am­bi­tions in be­half of the larger plans of Mel­chiz­e­dek that the three ce­les­tial be­ings ap­peared to him on the plains of Mamre. This was an ap­pear­ance of fact, not­with­stand­ing its as­so­ci­a­tion with the sub­se­quently fab­ri­cated nar­ra­tives re­lat­ing to the nat­u­ral de­struc­tion of Sodom and Go­mor­rah. And these leg­ends of the hap­pen­ings of those days in­di­cate how re­tarded were the morals and ethics of even so re­cent a time.

93:6.8Upon the con­sum­ma­tion of the solemn covenant, the rec­on­cil­i­a­tion be­tween Abra­ham and Mel­chiz­e­dek was com­plete. Abra­ham again as­sumed the civil and mil­i­tary lead­er­ship of the Salem colony, which at its height car­ried over one hun­dred thou­sand reg­u­lar tithe pay­ers on the rolls of the Mel­chiz­e­dek broth­er­hood. Abra­ham greatly im­proved the Salem tem­ple and pro­vided new tents for the en­tire school. He not only ex­tended the tithing sys­tem but also in­sti­tuted many im­proved meth­ods of con­duct­ing the busi­ness of the school, be­sides con­tribut­ing greatly to the bet­ter han­dling of the de­part­ment of mis­sion­ary pro­pa­ganda. He also did much to ef­fect im­prove­ment of the herds and the re­or­ga­ni­za­tion of the Salem dairy­ing projects. Abra­ham was a shrewd and ef­fi­cient busi­ness man, a wealthy man for his day; he was not overly pi­ous, but he was thor­oughly sin­cere, and he did be­lieve in Ma­chi­venta Mel­chiz­e­dek.

• defined as › act by which man earned God’s favor

94:0.1The early teach­ers of the Salem re­li­gion pen­e­trated to the re­motest tribes of Africa and Eura­sia, ever preach­ing Ma­chi­venta’s gospel of man’s faith and trust in the one uni­ver­sal God as the only price of ob­tain­ing di­vine fa­vor. Mel­chiz­e­dek’s covenant with Abra­ham was the pat­tern for all the early pro­pa­ganda that went out from Salem and other cen­ters. Uran­tia has never had more en­thu­si­as­tic and ag­gres­sive mis­sion­ar­ies of any re­li­gion than these no­ble men and women who car­ried the teach­ings of Mel­chiz­e­dek over the en­tire East­ern Hemi­sphere. These mis­sion­ar­ies were re­cruited from many peo­ples and races, and they largely spread their teach­ings through the medium of na­tive con­verts. They es­tab­lished train­ing cen­ters in dif­fer­ent parts of the world where they taught the na­tives the Salem re­li­gion and then com­mis­sioned these pupils to func­tion as teach­ers among their own peo­ple.

• defined as › act by which man earned God’s favor

94:1.5The Salem mis­sion­ar­ies preached the one God of Mel­chiz­e­dek, the Most High of heaven. This por­trayal was not al­to­gether dishar­mo­nious with the emerg­ing con­cept of the Fa­ther-Brahma as the source of all gods, but the Salem doc­trine was non­ritu­al­is­tic and hence ran di­rectly counter to the dog­mas, tra­di­tions, and teach­ings of the Brah­man priest­hood. Never would the Brah­man priests ac­cept the Salem teach­ing of sal­va­tion through faith, fa­vor with God apart from rit­u­al­is­tic ob­ser­vances and sac­ri­fi­cial cer­e­mo­ni­als.

94:1.6The re­jec­tion of the Mel­chiz­e­dek gospel of trust in God and sal­va­tion through faith marked a vi­tal turn­ing point for In­dia. The Salem mis­sion­ar­ies had con­tributed much to the loss of faith in all the an­cient Vedic gods, but the lead­ers, the priests of Vedism, re­fused to ac­cept the Mel­chiz­e­dek teach­ing of one God and one sim­ple faith.

• historically › Lao-tse taught childlike f.

94:6.5He taught the re­turn of the crea­ture to the Cre­ator and pic­tured life as the emer­gence of a per­son­al­ity from the cos­mic po­ten­tials, while death was like the re­turn­ing home of this crea­ture per­son­al­ity. His con­cept of true faith was un­usual, and he too likened it to the “at­ti­tude of a lit­tle child.”

• defined as › source of divine energy to remake world
• effect of faith › brings man to union with God

94:6.8But the pop­u­lar Tao­ism of twen­ti­eth-cen­tury Uran­tia has very lit­tle in com­mon with the lofty sen­ti­ments and the cos­mic con­cepts of the old philoso­pher who taught the truth as he per­ceived it, which was: That faith in the Ab­so­lute God is the source of that di­vine en­ergy which will re­make the world, and by which man as­cends to spir­i­tual union with Tao, the Eter­nal De­ity and Cre­ator Ab­so­lute of the uni­verses.

• defined as › individual’s relation to God, not creedal formulations

99:5.7Just as cer­tainly as men share their re­li­gious be­liefs, they cre­ate a re­li­gious group of some sort which even­tu­ally cre­ates com­mon goals. Some­day re­li­gion­ists will get to­gether and ac­tu­ally ef­fect co-op­er­a­tion on the ba­sis of unity of ide­als and pur­poses rather than at­tempt­ing to do so on the ba­sis of psy­cho­log­i­cal opin­ions and the­o­log­i­cal be­liefs. Goals rather than creeds should unify re­li­gion­ists. Since true re­li­gion is a mat­ter of per­sonal spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence, it is in­ev­i­ta­ble that each in­di­vid­ual re­li­gion­ist must have his own and per­sonal in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the re­al­iza­tion of that spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence. Let the term “faith” stand for the in­di­vid­ual’s re­la­tion to God rather than for the creedal for­mu­la­tion of what some group of mor­tals have been able to agree upon as a com­mon re­li­gious at­ti­tude. “Have you faith? Then have it to your­self.”

• defined as › substance of things hoped for, evidence of things not seen

99:5.8That faith is con­cerned only with the grasp of ideal val­ues is shown by the New Tes­ta­ment def­i­ni­tion which de­clares that faith is the sub­stance of things hoped for and the ev­i­dence of things not seen.

• defined as › mobilization of total powers of personality

100:3.7Man can­not cause growth, but he can sup­ply fa­vor­able con­di­tions. Growth is al­ways un­con­scious, be it phys­i­cal, in­tel­lec­tual, or spir­i­tual. Love thus grows; it can­not be cre­ated, man­u­fac­tured, or pur­chased; it must grow. Evo­lu­tion is a cos­mic tech­nique of growth. So­cial growth can­not be se­cured by leg­is­la­tion, and moral growth is not had by im­proved ad­min­is­tra­tion. Man may man­u­fac­ture a ma­chine, but its real value must be de­rived from hu­man cul­ture and per­sonal ap­pre­ci­a­tion. Man’s sole con­tri­bu­tion to growth is the mo­bi­liza­tion of the to­tal pow­ers of his per­son­al­ity—liv­ing faith.

• defined as › trusting Father as a little child trusts his parent
• Jesus’ faith

100:7.7Of Je­sus it was truly said, “He trusted God.” As a man among men he most sub­limely trusted the Fa­ther in heaven. He trusted his Fa­ther as a lit­tle child trusts his earthly par­ent. His faith was per­fect but never pre­sump­tu­ous. No mat­ter how cruel na­ture might ap­pear to be or how in­dif­fer­ent to man’s wel­fare on earth, Je­sus never fal­tered in his faith. He was im­mune to dis­ap­point­ment and im­per­vi­ous to per­se­cu­tion. He was un­touched by ap­par­ent fail­ure.

• defined as › always triumphant over doubting

101:0.3Re­li­gion, the con­vic­tion-faith of the per­son­al­ity, can al­ways tri­umph over the su­per­fi­cially con­tra­dic­tory logic of de­spair born in the un­be­liev­ing ma­te­rial mind. There re­ally is a true and gen­uine in­ner voice, that “true light which lights ev­ery man who comes into the world.” And this spirit lead­ing is dis­tinct from the eth­i­cal prompt­ing of hu­man con­science. The feel­ing of re­li­gious as­sur­ance is more than an emo­tional feel­ing. The as­sur­ance of re­li­gion tran­scends the rea­son of the mind, even the logic of phi­los­o­phy. Re­li­gion is faith, trust, and as­sur­ance.

• defined as › connection of moral consciousness and spiritual reality

101:1.6Faith unites moral in­sight with con­sci­en­tious dis­crim­i­na­tions of val­ues, and the pre-ex­is­tent evo­lu­tion­ary sense of duty com­pletes the an­ces­try of true re­li­gion. The ex­pe­ri­ence of re­li­gion even­tu­ally re­sults in the cer­tain con­scious­ness of God and in the un­doubted as­sur­ance of the sur­vival of the be­liev­ing per­son­al­ity.

• defined as › attribute of personal religious experience

101:2.2Rea­son is the method of sci­ence; faith is the method of re­li­gion; logic is the at­tempted tech­nique of phi­los­o­phy. Rev­e­la­tion com­pen­sates for the ab­sence of the mor­ontia view­point by pro­vid­ing a tech­nique for achiev­ing unity in the com­pre­hen­sion of the re­al­ity and re­la­tion­ships of mat­ter and spirit by the me­di­a­tion of mind. And true rev­e­la­tion never ren­ders sci­ence un­nat­u­ral, re­li­gion un­rea­son­able, or phi­los­o­phy il­log­i­cal.

• effect of faith › transforms First Cause into God of salvation

101:2.3Rea­son, through the study of sci­ence, may lead back through na­ture to a First Cause, but it re­quires re­li­gious faith to trans­form the First Cause of sci­ence into a God of sal­va­tion; and rev­e­la­tion is fur­ther re­quired for the val­i­da­tion of such a faith, such spir­i­tual in­sight.

• defined as › attribute of personal religious experience

101:2.8Rea­son is the proof of sci­ence, faith the proof of re­li­gion, logic the proof of phi­los­o­phy, but rev­e­la­tion is val­i­dated only by hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence. Sci­ence yields knowl­edge; re­li­gion yields hap­pi­ness; phi­los­o­phy yields unity; rev­e­la­tion con­firms the ex­pe­ri­en­tial har­mony of this tri­une ap­proach to uni­ver­sal re­al­ity.

• effect of faith › reveals God in soul

101:2.10Faith re­veals God in the soul. Rev­e­la­tion, the sub­sti­tute for mor­ontia in­sight on an evo­lu­tion­ary world, en­ables man to see the same God in na­ture that faith ex­hibits in his soul. Thus does rev­e­la­tion suc­cess­fully bridge the gulf be­tween the ma­te­rial and the spir­i­tual, even be­tween the crea­ture and the Cre­ator, be­tween man and God.

• defined as › endowment of cosmic mind and Adjuster

101:3.2Faith-in­sight, or spir­i­tual in­tu­ition, is the en­dow­ment of the cos­mic mind in as­so­ci­a­tion with the Thought Ad­juster, which is the Fa­ther’s gift to man. Spir­i­tual rea­son, soul in­tel­li­gence, is the en­dow­ment of the Holy Spirit, the Cre­ative Spirit’s gift to man. Spir­i­tual phi­los­o­phy, the wis­dom of spirit re­al­i­ties, is the en­dow­ment of the Spirit of Truth, the com­bined gift of the be­stowal Sons to the chil­dren of men. And the co-or­di­na­tion and in­teras­so­ci­a­tion of these spirit en­dow­ments con­sti­tute man a spirit per­son­al­ity in po­ten­tial des­tiny.

• defined as › connection of moral consciousness and spiritual reality
• effect of faith › 12 reactions reveal

101:3.4Through re­li­gious faith the soul of man re­veals it­self and demon­strates the po­ten­tial di­vin­ity of its emerg­ing na­ture by the char­ac­ter­is­tic man­ner in which it in­duces the mor­tal per­son­al­ity to re­act to cer­tain try­ing in­tel­lec­tual and test­ing so­cial sit­u­a­tions. Gen­uine spir­i­tual faith (true moral con­scious­ness) is re­vealed in that it:

101:3.51. Causes ethics and morals to pro­gress de­spite in­her­ent and ad­verse an­i­mal­is­tic ten­den­cies.

101:3.62. Pro­duces a sub­lime trust in the good­ness of God even in the face of bit­ter dis­ap­point­ment and crush­ing de­feat.

101:3.73. Gen­er­ates pro­found cour­age and con­fi­dence de­spite nat­u­ral ad­ver­sity and phys­i­cal calamity.

101:3.84. Ex­hibits in­ex­pli­ca­ble poise and sus­tain­ing tran­quil­lity not­with­stand­ing baf­fling dis­eases and even acute phys­i­cal suf­fer­ing.

101:3.95. Main­tains a mys­te­ri­ous poise and com­po­sure of per­son­al­ity in the face of mal­treat­ment and the rank­est in­jus­tice.

101:3.106. Main­tains a di­vine trust in ul­ti­mate vic­tory in spite of the cru­el­ties of seem­ingly blind fate and the ap­par­ent ut­ter in­dif­fer­ence of nat­u­ral forces to hu­man wel­fare.

• effect of faith › successfully withstands all intellectual sophistries

101:3.117. Per­sists in the unswerv­ing be­lief in God de­spite all con­trary demon­stra­tions of logic and suc­cess­fully with­stands all other in­tel­lec­tual soph­ist­ries.

101:3.128. Con­tin­ues to ex­hibit un­daunted faith in the soul’s sur­vival re­gard­less of the de­cep­tive teach­ings of false sci­ence and the per­sua­sive delu­sions of un­sound phi­los­o­phy.

101:3.139. Lives and tri­umphs ir­re­spec­tive of the crush­ing over­load of the com­plex and par­tial civ­i­liza­tions of mod­ern times.

101:3.1410. Con­tributes to the con­tin­ued sur­vival of al­tru­ism in spite of hu­man self­ish­ness, so­cial an­tag­o­nisms, in­dus­trial greeds, and po­lit­i­cal mal­ad­just­ments.

101:3.1511. Stead­fastly ad­heres to a sub­lime be­lief in uni­verse unity and di­vine guid­ance re­gard­less of the per­plex­ing pres­ence of evil and sin.

101:3.1612. Goes right on wor­ship­ing God in spite of any­thing and ev­ery­thing. Dares to de­clare, “Even though he slay me, yet will I serve him.”

• defined as › attribute of personal religious experience
• effect of faith › dominates mode of living
• have faith in › God alone

101:8.1Be­lief has at­tained the level of faith when it mo­ti­vates life and shapes the mode of liv­ing. The ac­cep­tance of a teach­ing as true is not faith; that is mere be­lief. Nei­ther is cer­tainty nor con­vic­tion faith. A state of mind at­tains to faith lev­els only when it ac­tu­ally dom­i­nates the mode of liv­ing. Faith is a liv­ing at­tri­bute of gen­uine per­sonal re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. One be­lieves truth, ad­mires beauty, and rev­er­ences good­ness, but does not wor­ship them; such an at­ti­tude of sav­ing faith is cen­tered on God alone, who is all of these per­son­i­fied and in­finitely more.

• defined as › living experience
• warnings regarding faith › must be personal

101:8.2Be­lief is al­ways lim­it­ing and bind­ing; faith is ex­pand­ing and re­leas­ing. Be­lief fix­ates, faith lib­er­ates. But liv­ing re­li­gious faith is more than the as­so­ci­a­tion of no­ble be­liefs; it is more than an ex­alted sys­tem of phi­los­o­phy; it is a liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence con­cerned with spir­i­tual mean­ings, di­vine ide­als, and su­preme val­ues; it is God-know­ing and man-serv­ing. Be­liefs may be­come group pos­ses­sions, but faith must be per­sonal. The­o­logic be­liefs can be sug­gested to a group, but faith can rise up only in the heart of the in­di­vid­ual re­li­gion­ist.

101:8.3Faith has fal­si­fied its trust when it pre­sumes to deny re­al­i­ties and to con­fer upon its devo­tees as­sumed knowl­edge. Faith is a traitor when it fos­ters be­trayal of in­tel­lec­tual in­tegrity and be­lit­tles loy­alty to su­preme val­ues and di­vine ide­als. Faith never shuns the prob­lem-solv­ing duty of mor­tal liv­ing. Liv­ing faith does not fos­ter big­otry, per­se­cu­tion, or in­tol­er­ance.

101:8.4Faith does not shackle the cre­ative imag­i­na­tion, nei­ther does it main­tain an un­rea­son­ing prej­u­dice to­ward the dis­cov­er­ies of sci­en­tific in­ves­ti­ga­tion. Faith vi­tal­izes re­li­gion and con­strains the re­li­gion­ist hero­ically to live the golden rule. The zeal of faith is ac­cord­ing to knowl­edge, and its striv­ings are the pre­ludes to sub­lime peace.

• defined as › connection of moral consciousness and spiritual reality

101:9.9Faith be­comes the con­nec­tion be­tween moral con­scious­ness and the spir­i­tual con­cept of en­dur­ing re­al­ity. Re­li­gion be­comes the av­enue of man’s es­cape from the ma­te­rial lim­i­ta­tions of the tem­po­ral and nat­u­ral world to the su­per­nal re­al­i­ties of the eter­nal and spir­i­tual world by and through the tech­nique of sal­va­tion, the pro­gres­sive mor­ontia trans­for­ma­tion.

• defined as › only passport to completion of reality, eternity of life

101:10.6Never can there be ei­ther sci­en­tific or log­i­cal proofs of di­vin­ity. Rea­son alone can never val­i­date the val­ues and good­nesses of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. But it will al­ways re­main true: Whoso­ever wills to do the will of God shall com­pre­hend the va­lid­ity of spir­i­tual val­ues. This is the near­est ap­proach that can be made on the mor­tal level to of­fer­ing proofs of the re­al­ity of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. Such faith af­fords the only es­cape from the me­chan­i­cal clutch of the ma­te­rial world and from the er­ror dis­tor­tion of the in­com­plete­ness of the in­tel­lec­tual world; it is the only dis­cov­ered so­lu­tion to the im­passe in mor­tal think­ing re­gard­ing the con­tin­u­ing sur­vival of the in­di­vid­ual per­son­al­ity. It is the only pass­port to com­ple­tion of re­al­ity and to eter­nity of life in a uni­ver­sal cre­ation of love, law, unity, and pro­gres­sive De­ity at­tain­ment.

• have faith in › values being translated from material to spiritual

102:0.3This sav­ing faith has its birth in the hu­man heart when the moral con­scious­ness of man re­al­izes that hu­man val­ues may be trans­lated in mor­tal ex­pe­ri­ence from the ma­te­rial to the spir­i­tual, from the hu­man to the di­vine, from time to eter­nity.

• Adjuster translates sense of duty into
• simple childlike f. is only requisite to enter kingdom

102:1.1The work of the Thought Ad­juster con­sti­tutes the ex­pla­na­tion of the trans­la­tion of man’s prim­i­tive and evo­lu­tion­ary sense of duty into that higher and more cer­tain faith in the eter­nal re­al­i­ties of rev­e­la­tion. There must be per­fec­tion hunger in man’s heart to in­sure ca­pac­ity for com­pre­hend­ing the faith paths to su­preme at­tain­ment. If any man chooses to do the di­vine will, he shall know the way of truth. It is lit­er­ally true, “Hu­man things must be known in or­der to be loved, but di­vine things must be loved in or­der to be known.” But hon­est doubts and sin­cere ques­tion­ings are not sin; such at­ti­tudes merely spell de­lay in the pro­gres­sive jour­ney to­ward per­fec­tion at­tain­ment. Child­like trust se­cures man’s en­trance into the king­dom of heav­enly as­cent, but prog­ress is wholly de­pen­dent on the vig­or­ous ex­er­cise of the ro­bust and con­fi­dent faith of the full-grown man.

• argues from spirit program of eternity

102:1.2The rea­son of sci­ence is based on the ob­serv­able facts of time; the faith of re­li­gion ar­gues from the spirit pro­gram of eter­nity. What knowl­edge and rea­son can­not do for us, true wis­dom ad­mon­ishes us to al­low faith to ac­com­plish through re­li­gious in­sight and spir­i­tual trans­for­ma­tion.

• defined as › enduring as seeing Him who is invisible

102:2.8Again, there are other types of un­sta­ble and poorly dis­ci­plined souls who would use the sen­ti­men­tal ideas of re­li­gion as an av­enue of es­cape from the ir­ri­tat­ing de­mands of liv­ing. When cer­tain vac­il­lat­ing and timid mor­tals at­tempt to es­cape from the in­ces­sant pres­sure of evo­lu­tion­ary life, re­li­gion, as they con­ceive it, seems to pre­sent the near­est refuge, the best av­enue of es­cape. But it is the mis­sion of re­li­gion to pre­pare man for bravely, even hero­ically, fac­ing the vi­cis­si­tudes of life. Re­li­gion is evo­lu­tion­ary man’s su­preme en­dow­ment, the one thing which en­ables him to carry on and “en­dure as see­ing Him who is in­vis­i­ble.” Mys­ti­cism, how­ever, is of­ten some­thing of a re­treat from life which is em­braced by those hu­mans who do not rel­ish the more ro­bust ac­tiv­i­ties of liv­ing a re­li­gious life in the open are­nas of hu­man so­ci­ety and com­merce. True re­li­gion must act. Con­duct will be the re­sult of re­li­gion when man ac­tu­ally has it, or rather when re­li­gion is per­mit­ted truly to pos­sess the man. Never will re­li­gion be con­tent with mere think­ing or un­act­ing feel­ing.

• defined as › not subject to precise definition

102:6.1The philo­sophic elim­i­na­tion of re­li­gious fear and the steady prog­ress of sci­ence add greatly to the mor­tal­ity of false gods; and even though these ca­su­al­ties of man-made de­i­ties may mo­men­tar­ily be­fog the spir­i­tual vi­sion, they even­tu­ally de­stroy that ig­no­rance and su­per­sti­tion which so long ob­scured the liv­ing God of eter­nal love. The re­la­tion be­tween the crea­ture and the Cre­ator is a liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence, a dy­namic re­li­gious faith, which is not sub­ject to pre­cise def­i­ni­tion. To iso­late part of life and call it re­li­gion is to dis­in­te­grate life and to dis­tort re­li­gion. And this is just why the God of wor­ship claims all al­le­giance or none.

102:6.2The gods of prim­i­tive men may have been no more than shad­ows of them­selves; the liv­ing God is the di­vine light whose in­ter­rup­tions con­sti­tute the cre­ation shad­ows of all space.

102:6.3The re­li­gion­ist of philo­sophic at­tain­ment has faith in a per­sonal God of per­sonal sal­va­tion, some­thing more than a re­al­ity, a value, a level of achieve­ment, an ex­alted pro­cess, a trans­mu­ta­tion, the ul­ti­mate of time-space, an ide­al­iza­tion, the per­son­al­iza­tion of en­ergy, the en­tity of grav­ity, a hu­man pro­jec­tion, the ide­al­iza­tion of self, na­ture’s up­thrust, the in­cli­na­tion to good­ness, the for­ward im­pulse of evo­lu­tion, or a sub­lime hy­poth­e­sis. The re­li­gion­ist has faith in a God of love. Love is the essence of re­li­gion and the well­spring of su­pe­rior civ­i­liza­tion.

• effect of faith › transforms First Cause into God of salvation

102:6.4Faith trans­forms the philo­sophic God of prob­a­bil­ity into the sav­ing God of cer­tainty in the per­sonal re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. Skep­ti­cism may chal­lenge the the­o­ries of the­ol­ogy, but con­fi­dence in the de­pend­abil­ity of per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence af­firms the truth of that be­lief which has grown into faith.

• defined as › only method to become God-knowing
• have faith in › God alone

102:6.5Con­vic­tions about God may be ar­rived at through wise rea­son­ing, but the in­di­vid­ual be­comes God-know­ing only by faith, through per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence. In much that per­tains to life, prob­a­bil­ity must be reck­oned with, but when con­tact­ing with cos­mic re­al­ity, cer­tainty may be ex­pe­ri­enced when such mean­ings and val­ues are ap­proached by liv­ing faith. The God-know­ing soul dares to say, “I know,” even when this knowl­edge of God is ques­tioned by the un­be­liever who de­nies such cer­ti­tude be­cause it is not wholly sup­ported by in­tel­lec­tual logic. To ev­ery such doubter the be­liever only replies, “How do you know that I do not know?”

102:6.6Though rea­son can al­ways ques­tion faith, faith can al­ways sup­ple­ment both rea­son and logic. Rea­son cre­ates the prob­a­bil­ity which faith can trans­form into a moral cer­tainty, even a spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence. God is the first truth and the last fact; there­fore does all truth take ori­gin in him, while all facts ex­ist rel­a­tive to him. God is ab­so­lute truth. As truth one may know God, but to un­der­stand—to ex­plain—God, one must ex­plore the fact of the uni­verse of uni­verses. The vast gulf be­tween the ex­pe­ri­ence of the truth of God and ig­no­rance as to the fact of God can be bridged only by liv­ing faith. Rea­son alone can­not achieve har­mony be­tween in­fi­nite truth and uni­ver­sal fact.

• defined as › always triumphant over doubting

102:6.7Be­lief may not be able to re­sist doubt and with­stand fear, but faith is al­ways tri­umphant over doubt­ing, for faith is both pos­i­tive and liv­ing. The pos­i­tive al­ways has the ad­van­tage over the neg­a­tive, truth over er­ror, ex­pe­ri­ence over the­ory, spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties over the iso­lated facts of time and space. The con­vinc­ing ev­i­dence of this spir­i­tual cer­tainty con­sists in the so­cial fruits of the spirit which such be­liev­ers, faithers, yield as a re­sult of this gen­uine spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence. Said Je­sus: “If you love your fel­lows as I have loved you, then shall all men know that you are my dis­ci­ples.”

102:6.8To sci­ence God is a pos­si­bil­ity, to psy­chol­ogy a de­sir­abil­ity, to phi­los­o­phy a prob­a­bil­ity, to re­li­gion a cer­tainty, an ac­tu­al­ity of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. Rea­son de­mands that a phi­los­o­phy which can­not find the God of prob­a­bil­ity should be very re­spect­ful of that re­li­gious faith which can and does find the God of cer­ti­tude. Nei­ther should sci­ence dis­count re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence on grounds of credulity, not so long as it per­sists in the as­sump­tion that man’s in­tel­lec­tual and philo­sophic en­dow­ments emerged from in­creas­ingly lesser in­tel­li­gences the fur­ther back they go, fi­nally tak­ing ori­gin in prim­i­tive life which was ut­terly de­void of all think­ing and feel­ing.

102:6.9The facts of evo­lu­tion must not be ar­rayed against the truth of the re­al­ity of the cer­tainty of the spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence of the re­li­gious liv­ing of the God-know­ing mor­tal. In­tel­li­gent men should cease to rea­son like chil­dren and should at­tempt to use the con­sis­tent logic of adult­hood, logic which tol­er­ates the con­cept of truth along­side the ob­ser­va­tion of fact. Sci­en­tific ma­te­ri­al­ism has gone bankrupt when it per­sists, in the face of each re­cur­ring uni­verse phe­nom­e­non, in re­fund­ing its cur­rent ob­jec­tions by re­fer­ring what is ad­mit­tedly higher back into that which is ad­mit­tedly lower. Con­sis­tency de­mands the rec­og­ni­tion of the ac­tiv­i­ties of a pur­po­sive Cre­ator.

102:6.10Or­ganic evo­lu­tion is a fact; pur­po­sive or pro­gres­sive evo­lu­tion is a truth which makes con­sis­tent the oth­er­wise con­tra­dic­tory phe­nom­ena of the ever-as­cend­ing achieve­ments of evo­lu­tion. The higher any sci­en­tist pro­gresses in his cho­sen sci­ence, the more will he aban­don the the­o­ries of ma­te­ri­al­is­tic fact in fa­vor of the cos­mic truth of the dom­i­nance of the Su­preme Mind. Ma­te­ri­al­ism cheap­ens hu­man life; the gospel of Je­sus tremen­dously en­hances and su­per­nally ex­alts ev­ery mor­tal. Mor­tal ex­is­tence must be vi­su­al­ized as con­sist­ing in the in­trigu­ing and fas­ci­nat­ing ex­pe­ri­ence of the re­al­iza­tion of the re­al­ity of the meet­ing of the hu­man up­reach and the di­vine and sav­ing down­reach.

• defined as › handles superficial contentions

102:7.6The God-know­ing in­di­vid­ual is not one who is blind to the dif­fi­cul­ties or un­mind­ful of the ob­sta­cles which stand in the way of find­ing God in the maze of su­per­sti­tion, tra­di­tion, and ma­te­ri­al­is­tic ten­den­cies of mod­ern times. He has en­coun­tered all these de­ter­rents and tri­umphed over them, sur­mounted them by liv­ing faith, and at­tained the high­lands of spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence in spite of them. But it is true that many who are in­wardly sure about God fear to as­sert such feel­ings of cer­tainty be­cause of the mul­ti­plic­ity and clev­er­ness of those who as­sem­ble ob­jec­tions and mag­nify dif­fi­cul­ties about be­liev­ing in God. It re­quires no great depth of in­tel­lect to pick flaws, ask ques­tions, or raise ob­jec­tions. But it does re­quire bril­liance of mind to an­swer these ques­tions and solve these dif­fi­cul­ties; faith cer­tainty is the great­est tech­nique for deal­ing with all such su­per­fi­cial con­tentions.

• warnings regarding faith › cannot be nourished by philosophy
• warnings regarding faith › surely instructed only by revelation

103:7.1Sci­ence is sus­tained by rea­son, re­li­gion by faith. Faith, though not pred­i­cated on rea­son, is rea­son­able; though in­de­pen­dent of logic, it is nonethe­less en­cour­aged by sound logic. Faith can­not be nour­ished even by an ideal phi­los­o­phy; in­deed, it is, with sci­ence, the very source of such a phi­los­o­phy. Faith, hu­man re­li­gious in­sight, can be surely in­structed only by rev­e­la­tion, can be surely el­e­vated only by per­sonal mor­tal ex­pe­ri­ence with the spir­i­tual Ad­juster pres­ence of the God who is spirit.

• morontia and spirit reason will augment

103:7.2True sal­va­tion is the tech­nique of the di­vine evo­lu­tion of the mor­tal mind from mat­ter iden­ti­fi­ca­tion through the realms of mor­ontia li­ai­son to the high uni­verse sta­tus of spir­i­tual cor­re­la­tion. And as ma­te­rial in­tu­itive in­stinct pre­cedes the ap­pear­ance of rea­soned knowl­edge in ter­res­trial evo­lu­tion, so does the man­i­fes­ta­tion of spir­i­tual in­tu­itive in­sight presage the later ap­pear­ance of mor­ontia and spirit rea­son and ex­pe­ri­ence in the su­per­nal pro­gram of ce­les­tial evo­lu­tion, the busi­ness of trans­mut­ing the po­ten­tials of man the tem­po­ral into the ac­tu­al­ity and di­vin­ity of man the eter­nal, a Par­a­dise fi­nal­i­ter.

• defined as › logical from inner viewpoint

103:7.6Logic is the tech­nique of phi­los­o­phy, its method of ex­pres­sion. Within the do­main of true sci­ence, rea­son is al­ways amenable to gen­uine logic; within the do­main of true re­li­gion, faith is al­ways log­i­cal from the ba­sis of an in­ner view­point, even though such faith may ap­pear to be quite un­founded from the in­look­ing view­point of the sci­en­tific ap­proach. From out­ward, look­ing within, the uni­verse may ap­pear to be ma­te­rial; from within, look­ing out, the same uni­verse ap­pears to be wholly spir­i­tual. Rea­son grows out of ma­te­rial aware­ness, faith out of spir­i­tual aware­ness, but through the me­di­a­tion of a phi­los­o­phy strength­ened by rev­e­la­tion, logic may con­firm both the in­ward and the out­ward view, thereby ef­fect­ing the sta­bi­liza­tion of both sci­ence and re­li­gion. Thus, through com­mon con­tact with the logic of phi­los­o­phy, may both sci­ence and re­li­gion be­come in­creas­ingly tol­er­ant of each other, less and less skep­ti­cal.

• defined as › recognition of validity of spiritual consciousness

103:7.13Rea­son is the act of rec­og­niz­ing the con­clu­sions of con­scious­ness with re­gard to the ex­pe­ri­ence in and with the phys­i­cal world of en­ergy and mat­ter. Faith is the act of rec­og­niz­ing the va­lid­ity of spir­i­tual con­scious­ness—some­thing which is in­ca­pable of other mor­tal proof. Logic is the syn­thetic truth-seek­ing pro­gres­sion of the unity of faith and rea­son and is founded on the con­sti­tu­tive mind en­dow­ments of mor­tal be­ings, the in­nate rec­og­ni­tion of things, mean­ings, and val­ues.

• defined as › always triumphant over doubting

103:8.4If you truly be­lieve in God—by faith know him and love him—do not per­mit the re­al­ity of such an ex­pe­ri­ence to be in any way less­ened or de­tracted from by the doubt­ing in­sin­u­a­tions of sci­ence, the cav­il­ing of logic, the pos­tu­lates of phi­los­o­phy, or the clever sug­ges­tions of well-mean­ing souls who would cre­ate a re­li­gion with­out God.

103:8.5The cer­tainty of the God-know­ing re­li­gion­ist should not be dis­turbed by the un­cer­tainty of the doubt­ing ma­te­ri­al­ist; rather should the un­cer­tainty of the un­be­liever be might­ily chal­lenged by the pro­found faith and un­shak­able cer­tainty of the ex­pe­ri­en­tial be­liever.

• defined as › man’s highest human attainment
• effect of faith › initiates man into world of divinity

103:9.6When the­ol­ogy mas­ters re­li­gion, re­li­gion dies; it be­comes a doc­trine in­stead of a life. The mis­sion of the­ol­ogy is merely to fa­cil­i­tate the self-con­scious­ness of per­sonal spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence. The­ol­ogy con­sti­tutes the re­li­gious ef­fort to de­fine, clar­ify, ex­pound, and jus­tify the ex­pe­ri­en­tial claims of re­li­gion, which, in the last anal­y­sis, can be val­i­dated only by liv­ing faith. In the higher phi­los­o­phy of the uni­verse, wis­dom, like rea­son, be­comes al­lied to faith. Rea­son, wis­dom, and faith are man’s high­est hu­man at­tain­ments. Rea­son in­tro­duces man to the world of facts, to things; wis­dom in­tro­duces him to a world of truth, to re­la­tion­ships; faith ini­ti­ates him into a world of di­vin­ity, spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence.

• never-ending journey in sole company of truth

103:9.7Faith most will­ingly car­ries rea­son along as far as rea­son can go and then goes on with wis­dom to the full philo­sophic limit; and then it dares to launch out upon the lim­it­less and never-end­ing uni­verse jour­ney in the sole com­pany of TRUTH.

• warnings regarding faith › must not be overmuch influenced by emotional consequences

103:9.11Faith leads to know­ing God, not merely to a mys­ti­cal feel­ing of the di­vine pres­ence. Faith must not be over­much in­flu­enced by its emo­tional con­se­quences. True re­li­gion is an ex­pe­ri­ence of be­liev­ing and know­ing as well as a sat­is­fac­tion of feel­ing.

• warnings regarding faith › no influence on ordained material laws

104:2.3Through the rec­og­ni­tion of the Trin­ity con­cept the mind of man can hope to grasp some­thing of the in­ter­re­la­tion­ship of love and law in the time-space cre­ations. Through spir­i­tual faith man gains in­sight into the love of God but soon dis­cov­ers that this spir­i­tual faith has no in­flu­ence on the or­dained laws of the ma­te­rial uni­verse. Ir­re­spec­tive of the firm­ness of man’s be­lief in God as his Par­a­dise Fa­ther, ex­pand­ing cos­mic hori­zons de­mand that he also give rec­og­ni­tion to the re­al­ity of Par­a­dise De­ity as uni­ver­sal law, that he rec­og­nize the Trin­ity sov­er­eignty ex­tend­ing out­ward from Par­a­dise and over­shad­ow­ing even the evolv­ing lo­cal uni­verses of the Cre­ator Sons and Cre­ative Daugh­ters of the three eter­nal per­sons whose de­ity union is the fact and re­al­ity and eter­nal in­di­vis­i­bil­ity of the Par­a­dise Trin­ity.

• accepts presence of indwelling Adjuster

108:6.8You hu­mans have be­gun an end­less un­fold­ing of an al­most in­fi­nite pan­o­rama, a lim­it­less ex­pand­ing of never-end­ing, ever-widen­ing spheres of op­por­tu­nity for ex­hil­a­rat­ing ser­vice, match­less ad­ven­ture, sub­lime un­cer­tainty, and bound­less at­tain­ment. When the clouds gather over­head, your faith should ac­cept the fact of the pres­ence of the in­dwelling Ad­juster, and thus you should be able to look be­yond the mists of mor­tal un­cer­tainty into the clear shin­ing of the sun of eter­nal righ­teous­ness on the beck­on­ing heights of the man­sion worlds of Sa­ta­nia.

• effect of faith › releases Adjuster’s superhuman activities

110:3.2The suc­cess of your Ad­juster in the en­ter­prise of pi­lot­ing you through the mor­tal life and bring­ing about your sur­vival de­pends not so much on the the­o­ries of your be­liefs as upon your de­ci­sions, de­ter­mi­na­tions, and stead­fast faith. All these move­ments of per­son­al­ity growth be­come pow­er­ful in­flu­ences aid­ing in your ad­vance­ment be­cause they help you to co-op­er­ate with the Ad­juster; they as­sist you in ceas­ing to re­sist. Thought Ad­justers suc­ceed or ap­par­ently fail in their ter­res­trial un­der­tak­ings just in so far as mor­tals suc­ceed or fail to co-op­er­ate with the scheme whereby they are to be ad­vanced along the as­cend­ing path of per­fec­tion at­tain­ment. The se­cret of sur­vival is wrapped up in the su­preme hu­man de­sire to be God­like and in the as­so­ci­ated will­ing­ness to do and be any and all things which are es­sen­tial to the fi­nal at­tain­ment of that over­mas­ter­ing de­sire.

• effect of faith › transmutes potentials to actuals in spirit world

110:6.17The mo­ti­va­tion of faith makes ex­pe­ri­en­tial the full re­al­iza­tion of man’s son­ship with God, but ac­tion, com­ple­tion of de­ci­sions, is es­sen­tial to the evo­lu­tion­ary at­tain­ment of con­scious­ness of pro­gres­sive kin­ship with the cos­mic ac­tu­al­ity of the Su­preme Be­ing. Faith trans­mutes po­ten­tials to ac­tu­als in the spir­i­tual world, but po­ten­tials be­come ac­tu­als in the fi­nite realms of the Su­preme only by and through the re­al­iza­tion of choice-ex­pe­ri­ence. But choos­ing to do the will of God joins spir­i­tual faith to ma­te­rial de­ci­sions in per­son­al­ity ac­tion and thus sup­plies a di­vine and spir­i­tual ful­crum for the more ef­fec­tive func­tion­ing of the hu­man and ma­te­rial lever­age of God-hunger. Such a wise co-or­di­na­tion of ma­te­rial and spir­i­tual forces greatly aug­ments both cos­mic re­al­iza­tion of the Su­preme and mor­ontia com­pre­hen­sion of the Par­a­dise De­i­ties.

• warnings regarding faith › qualitative status of soul wholly dependent on

110:6.18The mas­tery of the cos­mic cir­cles is re­lated to the quan­ti­ta­tive growth of the mor­ontia soul, the com­pre­hen­sion of su­preme mean­ings. But the qual­i­ta­tive sta­tus of this im­mor­tal soul is wholly de­pen­dent on the grasp of liv­ing faith upon the Par­a­dise-po­ten­tial fact-value that mor­tal man is a son of the eter­nal God. There­fore does a sev­enth cir­cler go on to the man­sion worlds to at­tain fur­ther quan­ti­ta­tive re­al­iza­tion of cos­mic growth just as does a sec­ond or even a first cir­cler.

• warnings regarding faith › polluted by poisons of fear

111:7.5“Much of my dif­fi­culty was due to the un­end­ing con­flict be­tween the two na­tures of my sub­ject: the urge of am­bi­tion op­posed by an­i­mal in­do­lence; the ide­als of a su­pe­rior peo­ple crossed by the in­stincts of an in­fe­rior race; the high pur­poses of a great mind an­tag­o­nized by the urge of a prim­i­tive in­her­i­tance; the long-dis­tance view of a far-see­ing Mon­i­tor coun­ter­acted by the near­sight­ed­ness of a crea­ture of time; the pro­gres­sive plans of an as­cend­ing be­ing mod­i­fied by the de­sires and long­ings of a ma­te­rial na­ture; the flashes of uni­verse in­tel­li­gence can­celled by the chem­i­cal-en­ergy man­dates of the evolv­ing race; the urge of an­gels op­posed by the emo­tions of an an­i­mal; the train­ing of an in­tel­lect an­nulled by the ten­den­cies of in­stinct; the ex­pe­ri­ence of the in­di­vid­ual op­posed by the ac­cu­mu­lated propen­si­ties of the race; the aims of the best over­shad­owed by the drift of the worst; the flight of ge­nius neu­tral­ized by the grav­ity of medi­ocrity; the prog­ress of the good re­tarded by the in­er­tia of the bad; the art of the beau­ti­ful be­smirched by the pres­ence of evil; the buoy­ancy of health neu­tral­ized by the de­bil­ity of dis­ease; the foun­tain of faith pol­luted by the poi­sons of fear; the spring of joy em­bit­tered by the wa­ters of sor­row; the glad­ness of an­tic­i­pa­tion dis­il­lu­sioned by the bit­ter­ness of re­al­iza­tion; the joys of liv­ing ever threat­ened by the sor­rows of death. Such a life on such a planet! And yet, be­cause of the ever-pres­ent help and urge of the Thought Ad­juster, this soul did achieve a fair de­gree of hap­pi­ness and suc­cess and has even now as­cended to the judg­ment halls of man­so­nia.”

• personality development predicated upon

115:7.2All this must be ac­cord­ing to the Fa­ther’s plan, which has pred­i­cated fi­nite prog­ress upon ef­fort, crea­ture achieve­ment upon per­se­ver­ance, and per­son­al­ity de­vel­op­ment upon faith. By thus or­dain­ing the ex­pe­ri­ence-evo­lu­tion of the Su­preme, the Fa­ther has made it pos­si­ble for fi­nite crea­tures to ex­ist in the uni­verses and, by ex­pe­ri­en­tial pro­gres­sion, some­time to at­tain the di­vin­ity of Su­prem­acy.

• Michael requires all creatures to master

120:1.3“In en­ter­ing upon the Uran­tia be­stowal, you have vol­un­tar­ily di­vested your­self of all ex­tra­plan­e­tary sup­port and spe­cial as­sis­tance such as might be ren­dered by any crea­ture of your own cre­ation. As your cre­ated sons of Neb­a­don are wholly de­pen­dent upon you for safe con­duct through­out their uni­verse ca­reers, so now must you be­come wholly and un­re­servedly de­pen­dent upon your Par­a­dise Fa­ther for safe con­duct through­out the un­re­vealed vi­cis­si­tudes of your en­su­ing mor­tal ca­reer. And when you shall have fin­ished this be­stowal ex­pe­ri­ence, you will know in very truth the full mean­ing and the rich sig­nif­i­cance of that faith-trust which you so un­vary­ingly re­quire all your crea­tures to mas­ter as a part of their in­ti­mate re­la­tion­ship with you as their lo­cal uni­verse Cre­ator and Fa­ther.

• just shall live by f.

131:2.8“Yah­weh is the God of my sal­va­tion; there­fore in the di­vine name will I put my trust. I will trust in the Lord with all my heart; I will lean not upon my own un­der­stand­ing. In all my ways I will ac­knowl­edge him, and he shall di­rect my paths. The Lord is faith­ful; he keeps his word with those who serve him; the just shall live by his faith. If you do not well, it is be­cause sin lies at the door; men reap the evil they plough and the sin they sow. Fret not your­self be­cause of evil­do­ers. If you re­gard in­iq­uity in your heart, the Lord will not hear you; if you sin against God, you also wrong your own soul. God will bring ev­ery man’s work to judg­ment with ev­ery se­cret thing, whether it be good or evil. As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.

• effect of faith › creates modesty, uprightness, wisdom, courage, knowledge, and perseverance
• from beyond will not fail us

131:3.2“Out of a pure heart shall glad­ness spring forth to the In­fi­nite; all my be­ing shall be at peace with this super­mor­tal re­joic­ing. My soul is filled with con­tent, and my heart over­flows with the bliss of peace­ful trust. I have no fear; I am free from anx­i­ety. I dwell in se­cu­rity, and my en­e­mies can­not alarm me. I am sat­is­fied with the fruits of my con­fi­dence. I have found the ap­proach to the Im­mor­tal easy of ac­cess. I pray for faith to sus­tain me on the long jour­ney; I know that faith from be­yond will not fail me. I know my breth­ren will pros­per if they be­come im­bued with the faith of the Im­mor­tal, even the faith that cre­ates mod­esty, up­right­ness, wis­dom, cour­age, knowl­edge, and per­se­ver­ance. Let us for­sake sor­row and dis­own fear. By faith let us lay hold upon true righ­teous­ness and gen­uine man­li­ness. Let us learn to med­i­tate on jus­tice and mercy. Faith is man’s true wealth; it is the en­dow­ment of virtue and glory.

• defined as › energy of better life

131:3.4“Cheer­ful­ness and glad­ness are the re­wards of deeds well done and to the glory of the Im­mor­tal. No man can rob you of the lib­erty of your own mind. When the faith of your re­li­gion has eman­ci­pated your heart, when the mind, like a moun­tain, is set­tled and im­mov­able, then shall the peace of the soul flow tran­quilly like a river of wa­ters. Those who are sure of sal­va­tion are for­ever free from lust, envy, ha­tred, and the delu­sions of wealth. While faith is the en­ergy of the bet­ter life, nev­er­the­less, must you work out your own sal­va­tion with per­se­ver­ance. If you would be cer­tain of your fi­nal sal­va­tion, then make sure that you sin­cerely seek to ful­fill all righ­teous­ness. Cul­ti­vate the as­sur­ance of the heart which springs from within and thus come to en­joy the ec­stasy of eter­nal sal­va­tion.

132:3.1Nabon was a Greek Jew and fore­most among the lead­ers of the chief mys­tery cult in Rome, the Mith­raic. While this high priest of Mith­ra­ism held many con­fer­ences with the Da­mas­cus scribe, he was most per­ma­nently in­flu­enced by their dis­cus­sion of truth and faith one evening. Nabon had thought to make a con­vert of Je­sus and had even sug­gested that he re­turn to Pales­tine as a Mith­raic teacher. He lit­tle re­al­ized that Je­sus was prepar­ing him to be­come one of the early con­verts to the gospel of the king­dom. Re­stated in mod­ern phrase­ol­ogy, the sub­stance of Je­sus’ teach­ing was:

132:3.2Truth can­not be de­fined with words, only by liv­ing. Truth is al­ways more than knowl­edge. Knowl­edge per­tains to things ob­served, but truth tran­scends such purely ma­te­rial lev­els in that it con­sorts with wis­dom and em­braces such im­pon­der­ables as hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence, even spir­i­tual and liv­ing re­al­i­ties. Knowl­edge orig­i­nates in sci­ence; wis­dom, in true phi­los­o­phy; truth, in the re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence of spir­i­tual liv­ing. Knowl­edge deals with facts; wis­dom, with re­la­tion­ships; truth, with re­al­ity val­ues.

132:3.3Man tends to crys­tal­lize sci­ence, for­mu­late phi­los­o­phy, and dog­ma­tize truth be­cause he is men­tally lazy in ad­just­ing to the pro­gres­sive strug­gles of liv­ing, while he is also ter­ri­bly afraid of the un­known. Nat­u­ral man is slow to ini­ti­ate changes in his habits of think­ing and in his tech­niques of liv­ing.

132:3.4Re­vealed truth, per­son­ally dis­cov­ered truth, is the su­preme de­light of the hu­man soul; it is the joint cre­ation of the ma­te­rial mind and the in­dwelling spirit. The eter­nal sal­va­tion of this truth-dis­cern­ing and beauty-lov­ing soul is as­sured by that hunger and thirst for good­ness which leads this mor­tal to de­velop a sin­gle­ness of pur­pose to do the Fa­ther’s will, to find God and to be­come like him. There is never con­flict be­tween true knowl­edge and truth. There may be con­flict be­tween knowl­edge and hu­man be­liefs, be­liefs col­ored with prej­u­dice, dis­torted by fear, and dom­i­nated by the dread of fac­ing new facts of ma­te­rial dis­cov­ery or spir­i­tual prog­ress.

• defined as › predicated on reflection, self-criticism, and uncompromising moral consciousness
• warnings regarding faith › truth only possessed by exercising

132:3.5But truth can never be­come man’s pos­ses­sion with­out the ex­er­cise of faith. This is true be­cause man’s thoughts, wis­dom, ethics, and ide­als will never rise higher than his faith, his sub­lime hope. And all such true faith is pred­i­cated on pro­found re­flec­tion, sin­cere self-crit­i­cism, and un­com­pro­mis­ing moral con­scious­ness. Faith is the in­spi­ra­tion of the spir­i­tized cre­ative imag­i­na­tion.

• effect of faith › releases Adjuster’s superhuman activities

132:3.6Faith acts to re­lease the super­hu­man ac­tiv­i­ties of the di­vine spark, the im­mor­tal germ, that lives within the mind of man, and which is the po­ten­tial of eter­nal sur­vival. Plants and an­i­mals sur­vive in time by the tech­nique of pass­ing on from one gen­er­a­tion to an­other iden­ti­cal par­ti­cles of them­selves. The hu­man soul (per­son­al­ity) of man sur­vives mor­tal death by iden­tity as­so­ci­a­tion with this in­dwelling spark of di­vin­ity, which is im­mor­tal, and which func­tions to per­pet­u­ate the hu­man per­son­al­ity upon a con­tin­u­ing and higher level of pro­gres­sive uni­verse ex­is­tence. The con­cealed seed of the hu­man soul is an im­mor­tal spirit. The sec­ond gen­er­a­tion of the soul is the first of a suc­ces­sion of per­son­al­ity man­i­fes­ta­tions of spir­i­tual and pro­gress­ing ex­is­tences, ter­mi­nat­ing only when this di­vine en­tity at­tains the source of its ex­is­tence, the per­sonal source of all ex­is­tence, God, the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther.

132:3.7Hu­man life con­tin­ues—sur­vives—be­cause it has a uni­verse func­tion, the task of find­ing God. The faith-ac­ti­vated soul of man can­not stop short of the at­tain­ment of this goal of des­tiny; and when it does once achieve this di­vine goal, it can never end be­cause it has be­come like God—eter­nal.

132:3.8Spir­i­tual evo­lu­tion is an ex­pe­ri­ence of the in­creas­ing and vol­un­tary choice of good­ness at­tended by an equal and pro­gres­sive diminu­tion of the pos­si­bil­ity of evil. With the at­tain­ment of fi­nal­ity of choice for good­ness and of com­pleted ca­pac­ity for truth ap­pre­ci­a­tion, there comes into ex­is­tence a per­fec­tion of beauty and ho­li­ness whose righ­teous­ness eter­nally in­hibits the pos­si­bil­ity of the emer­gence of even the con­cept of po­ten­tial evil. Such a God-know­ing soul casts no shadow of doubt­ing evil when func­tion­ing on such a high spirit level of di­vine good­ness.

132:3.9The pres­ence of the Par­a­dise spirit in the mind of man con­sti­tutes the rev­e­la­tion prom­ise and the faith pledge of an eter­nal ex­is­tence of di­vine pro­gres­sion for ev­ery soul seek­ing to achieve iden­tity with this im­mor­tal and in­dwelling spirit frag­ment of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther.

• effect of faith › fosters and maintains soul

132:3.10Uni­verse prog­ress is char­ac­ter­ized by in­creas­ing per­son­al­ity free­dom be­cause it is as­so­ci­ated with the pro­gres­sive at­tain­ment of higher and higher lev­els of self-un­der­stand­ing and con­se­quent vol­un­tary self-re­straint. The at­tain­ment of per­fec­tion of spir­i­tual self-re­straint equals com­plete­ness of uni­verse free­dom and per­sonal lib­erty. Faith fos­ters and main­tains man’s soul in the midst of the con­fu­sion of his early ori­en­ta­tion in such a vast uni­verse, whereas prayer be­comes the great uni­fier of the var­i­ous in­spi­ra­tions of the cre­ative imag­i­na­tion and the faith urges of a soul try­ing to iden­tify it­self with the spirit ide­als of the in­dwelling and as­so­ci­ated di­vine pres­ence.

132:3.11Nabon was greatly im­pressed by these words, as he was by each of his talks with Je­sus. These truths con­tin­ued to burn within his heart, and he was of great as­sis­tance to the later ar­riv­ing preach­ers of Je­sus’ gospel.

• parables regarding faith › seed in good soil

137:8.12“This new king­dom is like a seed grow­ing in the good soil of a field. It does not at­tain full fruit quickly. There is an in­ter­val of time be­tween the es­tab­lish­ment of the king­dom in the soul of man and that hour when the king­dom ripens into the full fruit of ev­er­last­ing righ­teous­ness and eter­nal sal­va­tion.

• simple childlike f. is only requisite to enter kingdom

137:8.17“John came preach­ing re­pen­tance to pre­pare you for the king­dom; now have I come pro­claim­ing faith, the gift of God, as the price of en­trance into the king­dom of heaven. If you would but be­lieve that my Fa­ther loves you with an in­fi­nite love, then you are in the king­dom of God.”

• effect of faith › forgiveness of sin through f.

138:8.2Je­sus taught them to preach the for­give­ness of sin through faith in God with­out pen­ance or sac­ri­fice, and that the Fa­ther in heaven loves all his chil­dren with the same eter­nal love. He en­joined his apos­tles to re­frain from dis­cussing:

• effect of faith › opens Father’s storehouse
• simple childlike f. is only requisite to enter kingdom

138:8.8Je­sus made plain to his apos­tles the dif­fer­ence be­tween the re­pen­tance of so-called good works as taught by the Jews and the change of mind by faith—the new birth—which he re­quired as the price of ad­mis­sion to the king­dom. He taught his apos­tles that faith was the only req­ui­site to en­ter­ing the Fa­ther’s king­dom. John had taught them “re­pen­tance—to flee from the wrath to come.” Je­sus taught, “Faith is the open door for en­ter­ing into the pres­ent, per­fect, and eter­nal love of God.” Je­sus did not speak like a prophet, one who comes to de­clare the word of God. He seemed to speak of him­self as one hav­ing au­thor­ity. Je­sus sought to di­vert their minds from mir­a­cle seek­ing to the find­ing of a real and per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence in the sat­is­fac­tion and as­sur­ance of the in­dwelling of God’s spirit of love and sav­ing grace.

• simple childlike f. is only requisite to enter kingdom

139:12.7To Je­sus, Ju­das was a faith ad­ven­ture. From the be­gin­ning the Mas­ter fully un­der­stood the weak­ness of this apos­tle and well knew the dan­gers of ad­mit­ting him to fel­low­ship. But it is the na­ture of the Sons of God to give ev­ery cre­ated be­ing a full and equal chance for sal­va­tion and sur­vival. Je­sus wanted not only the mor­tals of this world but the on­look­ers of in­nu­mer­able other worlds to know that, when doubts ex­ist as to the sin­cer­ity and whole­heart­ed­ness of a crea­ture’s de­vo­tion to the king­dom, it is the in­vari­able prac­tice of the Judges of men fully to re­ceive the doubt­ful can­di­date. The door of eter­nal life is wide open to all; “whoso­ever will may come”; there are no re­stric­tions or qual­i­fi­ca­tions save the faith of the one who comes.

• simple childlike f. is only requisite to enter kingdom

140:1.4“But for you, my chil­dren, and for all oth­ers who would fol­low you into this king­dom, there is set a se­vere test. Faith alone will pass you through its por­tals, but you must bring forth the fruits of my Fa­ther’s spirit if you would con­tinue to as­cend in the pro­gres­sive life of the di­vine fel­low­ship. Ver­ily, ver­ily, I say to you, not ev­ery one who says, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall en­ter the king­dom of heaven; but rather he who does the will of my Fa­ther who is in heaven.

• defined as › attitudes of fatherly love

140:5.4The Mas­ter in­tro­duced this mo­men­tous dis­course by call­ing at­ten­tion to four faith at­ti­tudes as the pre­lude to the sub­se­quent por­trayal of his four tran­scen­dent and su­preme re­ac­tions of fa­therly love in con­trast to the lim­i­ta­tions of mere broth­erly love.

140:5.5He first talked about those who were poor in spirit, hun­gered af­ter righ­teous­ness, en­dured meek­ness, and who were pure in heart. Such spirit-dis­cern­ing mor­tals could be ex­pected to at­tain such lev­els of di­vine self­less­ness as to be able to at­tempt the amaz­ing ex­er­cise of fa­therly af­fec­tion; that even as mourn­ers they would be em­pow­ered to show mercy, pro­mote peace, and en­dure per­se­cu­tions, and through­out all of these try­ing sit­u­a­tions to love even unlovely man­kind with a fa­therly love. A fa­ther’s af­fec­tion can at­tain lev­els of de­vo­tion that im­mea­sur­ably tran­scend a brother’s af­fec­tion.

• effect of faith › strengthens character, creates happiness

140:5.6The faith and the love of these beat­i­tudes strengthen moral char­ac­ter and cre­ate hap­pi­ness. Fear and anger weaken char­ac­ter and de­stroy hap­pi­ness. This mo­men­tous ser­mon started out upon the note of hap­pi­ness.

140:5.71. “Happy are the poor in spirit—the hum­ble.” To a child, hap­pi­ness is the sat­is­fac­tion of im­me­di­ate plea­sure crav­ing. The adult is will­ing to sow seeds of self-de­nial in or­der to reap sub­se­quent har­vests of aug­mented hap­pi­ness. In Je­sus’ times and since, hap­pi­ness has all too of­ten been as­so­ci­ated with the idea of the pos­ses­sion of wealth. In the story of the Phar­isee and the pub­li­can pray­ing in the tem­ple, the one felt rich in spirit—ego­tis­ti­cal; the other felt “poor in spirit”—hum­ble. One was self-suf­fi­cient; the other was teach­able and truth-seek­ing. The poor in spirit seek for goals of spir­i­tual wealth—for God. And such seek­ers af­ter truth do not have to wait for re­wards in a dis­tant fu­ture; they are re­warded now. They find the king­dom of heaven within their own hearts, and they ex­pe­ri­ence such hap­pi­ness now.

140:5.82. “Happy are they who hunger and thirst for righ­teous­ness, for they shall be filled.” Only those who feel poor in spirit will ever hunger for righ­teous­ness. Only the hum­ble seek for di­vine strength and crave spir­i­tual power. But it is most dan­ger­ous to know­ingly en­gage in spir­i­tual fast­ing in or­der to im­prove one’s ap­petite for spir­i­tual en­dow­ments. Phys­i­cal fast­ing be­comes dan­ger­ous af­ter four or five days; one is apt to lose all de­sire for food. Pro­longed fast­ing, ei­ther phys­i­cal or spir­i­tual, tends to de­stroy hunger.

140:5.9Ex­pe­ri­en­tial righ­teous­ness is a plea­sure, not a duty. Je­sus’ righ­teous­ness is a dy­namic love—fa­therly-broth­erly af­fec­tion. It is not the neg­a­tive or thou-shalt-not type of righ­teous­ness. How could one ever hunger for some­thing neg­a­tive—some­thing “not to do”?

140:5.10It is not so easy to teach a child mind these first two of the beat­i­tudes, but the ma­ture mind should grasp their sig­nif­i­cance.

140:5.113. “Happy are the meek, for they shall in­herit the earth.” Gen­uine meek­ness has no re­la­tion to fear. It is rather an at­ti­tude of man co-op­er­at­ing with God—“Your will be done.” It em­braces pa­tience and for­bear­ance and is mo­ti­vated by an un­shak­able faith in a law­ful and friendly uni­verse. It mas­ters all temp­ta­tions to rebel against the di­vine lead­ing. Je­sus was the ideal meek man of Uran­tia, and he in­her­ited a vast uni­verse.

• have faith in › God and one another

140:5.124. “Happy are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” Spir­i­tual pu­rity is not a neg­a­tive qual­ity, ex­cept that it does lack sus­pi­cion and re­venge. In dis­cussing pu­rity, Je­sus did not in­tend to deal ex­clu­sively with hu­man sex at­ti­tudes. He re­ferred more to that faith which man should have in his fel­low man; that faith which a par­ent has in his child, and which en­ables him to love his fel­lows even as a fa­ther would love them. A fa­ther’s love need not pam­per, and it does not con­done evil, but it is al­ways an­ti­cyn­i­cal. Fa­therly love has sin­gle­ness of pur­pose, and it al­ways looks for the best in man; that is the at­ti­tude of a true par­ent.

140:5.13To see God—by faith—means to ac­quire true spir­i­tual in­sight. And spir­i­tual in­sight en­hances Ad­juster guid­ance, and these in the end aug­ment God-con­scious­ness. And when you know the Fa­ther, you are con­firmed in the as­sur­ance of di­vine son­ship, and you can in­creas­ingly love each of your broth­ers in the flesh, not only as a brother—with broth­erly love—but also as a fa­ther—with fa­therly af­fec­tion.

140:5.14It is easy to teach this ad­mo­ni­tion even to a child. Chil­dren are nat­u­rally trust­ful, and par­ents should see to it that they do not lose that sim­ple faith. In deal­ing with chil­dren, avoid all de­cep­tion and re­frain from sug­gest­ing sus­pi­cion. Wisely help them to choose their heroes and se­lect their life­work.

• have faith in › triumph of spiritual realities

140:8.8Have faith—con­fi­dence in the even­tual tri­umph of di­vine jus­tice and eter­nal good­ness.

• parables regarding faith › mustard seed

140:8.27The three apos­tles were shocked this af­ter­noon when they re­al­ized that their Mas­ter’s re­li­gion made no pro­vi­sion for spir­i­tual self-ex­am­i­na­tion. All re­li­gions be­fore and af­ter the times of Je­sus, even Chris­tian­ity, care­fully pro­vide for con­sci­en­tious self-ex­am­i­na­tion. But not so with the re­li­gion of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth. Je­sus’ phi­los­o­phy of life is with­out re­li­gious in­tro­spec­tion. The car­pen­ter’s son never taught char­ac­ter build­ing; he taught char­ac­ter growth, declar­ing that the king­dom of heaven is like a mus­tard seed. But Je­sus said noth­ing which would pro­scribe self-anal­y­sis as a pre­ven­tion of con­ceited ego­tism.

• parables regarding faith › pearl of great price

140:8.28The right to en­ter the king­dom is con­di­tioned by faith, per­sonal be­lief. The cost of re­main­ing in the pro­gres­sive as­cent of the king­dom is the pearl of great price, in or­der to pos­sess which a man sells all that he has.

• simple childlike f. is only requisite to enter kingdom

140:10.1That evening while teach­ing in the house, for it had be­gun to rain, Je­sus talked at great length, try­ing to show the twelve what they must be, not what they must do. They knew only a re­li­gion that im­posed the do­ing of cer­tain things as the means of at­tain­ing righ­teous­ness—sal­va­tion. But Je­sus would re­it­er­ate, “In the king­dom you must be righ­teous in or­der to do the work.” Many times did he re­peat, “Be you there­fore per­fect, even as your Fa­ther in heaven is per­fect.” All the while was the Mas­ter ex­plain­ing to his be­wil­dered apos­tles that the sal­va­tion which he had come to bring to the world was to be had only by be­liev­ing, by sim­ple and sin­cere faith. Said Je­sus: “John preached a bap­tism of re­pen­tance, sor­row for the old way of liv­ing. You are to pro­claim the bap­tism of fel­low­ship with God. Preach re­pen­tance to those who stand in need of such teach­ing, but to those al­ready seek­ing sin­cere en­trance to the king­dom, open the doors wide and bid them en­ter into the joy­ous fel­low­ship of the sons of God.” But it was a dif­fi­cult task to per­suade these Galilean fish­er­men that, in the king­dom, be­ing righ­teous, by faith, must pre­cede do­ing righ­teous­ness in the daily life of the mor­tals of earth.

• have faith in › effectiveness of human desire to be like God

140:10.9John asked Je­sus, “Mas­ter, what is the king­dom of heaven?” And Je­sus an­swered: “The king­dom of heaven con­sists in these three es­sen­tials: first, rec­og­ni­tion of the fact of the sov­er­eignty of God; sec­ond, be­lief in the truth of son­ship with God; and third, faith in the ef­fec­tive­ness of the su­preme hu­man de­sire to do the will of God—to be like God. And this is the good news of the gospel: that by faith ev­ery mor­tal may have all these es­sen­tials of sal­va­tion.”

• simple childlike f. is only requisite to enter kingdom

141:7.6Je­sus laid great em­pha­sis upon what he called the two truths of first im­port in the teach­ings of the king­dom, and they are: the at­tain­ment of sal­va­tion by faith, and faith alone, as­so­ci­ated with the rev­o­lu­tion­ary teach­ing of the at­tain­ment of hu­man lib­erty through the sin­cere rec­og­ni­tion of truth, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” Je­sus was the truth made man­i­fest in the flesh, and he prom­ised to send his Spirit of Truth into the hearts of all his chil­dren af­ter his re­turn to the Fa­ther in heaven.

• effect of faith › destroys uncertainty, conflicting desires

142:5.3“The Su­preme Spirit shall bear wit­ness with your spir­its that you are truly the chil­dren of God. And if you are the sons of God, then have you been born of the spirit of God; and whoso­ever has been born of the spirit has in him­self the power to over­come all doubt, and this is the vic­tory that over­comes all un­cer­tainty, even your faith.

• have faith in › precious promises of God

143:2.4“By the old way you seek to sup­press, obey, and con­form to the rules of liv­ing; by the new way you are first trans­formed by the Spirit of Truth and thereby strength­ened in your in­ner soul by the con­stant spir­i­tual re­new­ing of your mind, and so are you en­dowed with the power of the cer­tain and joy­ous per­for­mance of the gra­cious, ac­cept­able, and per­fect will of God. For­get not—it is your per­sonal faith in the ex­ceed­ingly great and pre­cious promises of God that en­sures your be­com­ing par­tak­ers of the di­vine na­ture. Thus by your faith and the spirit’s trans­for­ma­tion, you be­come in re­al­ity the tem­ples of God, and his spirit ac­tu­ally dwells within you. If, then, the spirit dwells within you, you are no longer bond­slaves of the flesh but free and lib­er­ated sons of the spirit. The new law of the spirit en­dows you with the lib­erty of self-mas­tery in place of the old law of the fear of self-bond­age and the slav­ery of self-de­nial.

• defined as › gift of God

143:2.7“Your son­ship is grounded in faith, and you are to re­main un­moved by fear. Your joy is born of trust in the di­vine word, and you shall not there­fore be led to doubt the re­al­ity of the Fa­ther’s love and mercy. It is the very good­ness of God that leads men into true and gen­uine re­pen­tance. Your se­cret of the mas­tery of self is bound up with your faith in the in­dwelling spirit, which ever works by love. Even this sav­ing faith you have not of your­selves; it also is the gift of God. And if you are the chil­dren of this liv­ing faith, you are no longer the bond­slaves of self but rather the tri­umphant mas­ters of your­selves, the lib­er­ated sons of God.

• defined as › antidote to insecurity

143:7.3Wor­ship—con­tem­pla­tion of the spir­i­tual—must al­ter­nate with ser­vice, con­tact with ma­te­rial re­al­ity. Work should al­ter­nate with play; re­li­gion should be bal­anced by hu­mor. Pro­found phi­los­o­phy should be re­lieved by rhyth­mic po­etry. The strain of liv­ing—the time ten­sion of per­son­al­ity—should be re­laxed by the rest­ful­ness of wor­ship. The feel­ings of in­se­cu­rity aris­ing from the fear of per­son­al­ity iso­la­tion in the uni­verse should be an­ti­doted by the faith con­tem­pla­tion of the Fa­ther and by the at­tempted re­al­iza­tion of the Su­preme.

• parables regarding faith › three loaves

144:2.3“Prayer is the breath of the soul and should lead you to be per­sis­tent in your at­tempt to as­cer­tain the Fa­ther’s will. If any one of you has a neigh­bor, and you go to him at mid­night and say: ‘Friend, lend me three loaves, for a friend of mine on a jour­ney has come to see me, and I have noth­ing to set be­fore him’; and if your neigh­bor an­swers, ‘Trou­ble me not, for the door is now shut and the chil­dren and I are in bed; there­fore I can­not rise and give you bread,’ you will per­sist, ex­plain­ing that your friend hungers, and that you have no food to of­fer him. I say to you, though your neigh­bor will not rise and give you bread be­cause he is your friend, yet be­cause of your im­por­tu­nity he will get up and give you as many loaves as you need. If, then, per­sis­tence will win fa­vors even from mor­tal man, how much more will your per­sis­tence in the spirit win the bread of life for you from the will­ing hands of the Fa­ther in heaven. Again I say to you: Ask and it shall be given you; seek and you shall find; knock and it shall be opened to you. For ev­ery one who asks re­ceives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks the door of sal­va­tion will be opened.

• parables regarding faith › persistent widow

144:2.5“Let me tell you the story of a cer­tain judge who lived in a wicked city. This judge feared not God nor had re­spect for man. Now there was a needy widow in that city who came re­peat­edly to this un­just judge, say­ing, ‘Pro­tect me from my ad­ver­sary.’ For some time he would not give ear to her, but pres­ently he said to him­self: ‘Though I fear not God nor have re­gard for man, yet be­cause this widow ceases not to trou­ble me, I will vin­di­cate her lest she wear me out by her con­tin­ual com­ing.’ These sto­ries I tell you to en­cour­age you to per­sist in pray­ing and not to in­ti­mate that your pe­ti­tions will change the just and righ­teous Fa­ther above. Your per­sis­tence, how­ever, is not to win fa­vor with God but to change your earth at­ti­tude and to en­large your soul’s ca­pac­ity for spirit re­cep­tiv­ity.

• effect of faith › removes mountains of material difficulty

144:2.6“But when you pray, you ex­er­cise so lit­tle faith. Gen­uine faith will re­move moun­tains of ma­te­rial dif­fi­culty which may chance to lie in the path of soul ex­pan­sion and spir­i­tual prog­ress.”

• effect of faith › opens Father’s storehouse

146:2.87. The cry of the righ­teous is the faith act of the child of God which opens the door of the Fa­ther’s store­house of good­ness, truth, and mercy, and these good gifts have long been in wait­ing for the son’s ap­proach and per­sonal ap­pro­pri­a­tion. Prayer does not change the di­vine at­ti­tude to­ward man, but it does change man’s at­ti­tude to­ward the change­less Fa­ther. The mo­tive of the prayer gives it right of way to the di­vine ear, not the so­cial, eco­nomic, or out­ward re­li­gious sta­tus of the one who prays.

• parables regarding faith › new wine into fresh wine skins
• parables regarding faith › sewing unshrunk cloth on old garment

147:7.2On Tues­day evening Je­sus was con­duct­ing one of his cus­tom­ary classes of ques­tions and an­swers when the leader of the six spies said to him: “I was to­day talk­ing with one of John’s dis­ci­ples who is here at­tend­ing upon your teach­ing, and we were at a loss to un­der­stand why you never com­mand your dis­ci­ples to fast and pray as we Phar­isees fast and as John bade his fol­low­ers.” And Je­sus, re­fer­ring to a state­ment by John, an­swered this ques­tioner: “Do the sons of the bridecham­ber fast while the bride­groom is with them? As long as the bride­groom re­mains with them, they can hardly fast. But the time is com­ing when the bride­groom shall be taken away, and dur­ing those times the chil­dren of the bridecham­ber un­doubt­edly will fast and pray. To pray is nat­u­ral for the chil­dren of light, but fast­ing is not a part of the gospel of the king­dom of heaven. Be re­minded that a wise tai­lor does not sew a piece of new and un­shrunk cloth upon an old gar­ment, lest, when it is wet, it shrink and pro­duce a worse rent. Nei­ther do men put new wine into old wine skins, lest the new wine burst the skins so that both the wine and the skins per­ish. The wise man puts the new wine into fresh wine skins. There­fore do my dis­ci­ples show wis­dom in that they do not bring too much of the old or­der over into the new teach­ing of the gospel of the king­dom. You who have lost your teacher may be jus­ti­fied in fast­ing for a time. Fast­ing may be an ap­pro­pri­ate part of the law of Moses, but in the com­ing king­dom the sons of God shall ex­pe­ri­ence free­dom from fear and joy in the di­vine spirit.” And when they heard these words, the dis­ci­ples of John were com­forted while the Phar­isees them­selves were the more con­founded.

• effect of faith › makes believers secure in kingdom

147:8.5And then long into the night Je­sus pro­pounded to his apos­tles the truth that it was their faith that made them se­cure in the king­dom of the pres­ent and the fu­ture, and not their af­flic­tion of soul nor fast­ing of body. He ex­horted the apos­tles at least to live up to the ideas of the prophet of old and ex­pressed the hope that they would pro­gress far be­yond even the ide­als of Isa­iah and the older proph­ets. His last words that night were: “Grow in grace by means of that liv­ing faith which grasps the fact that you are the sons of God while at the same time it rec­og­nizes ev­ery man as a brother.”

• effect of faith › f. literally compelled healing

149:1.1By the time the camp at Beth­saida had been bro­ken up, the fame of Je­sus, par­tic­u­larly as a healer, had spread to all parts of Pales­tine and through all of Syria and the sur­round­ing coun­tries. For weeks af­ter they left Beth­saida, the sick con­tin­ued to ar­rive, and when they did not find the Mas­ter, on learn­ing from David where he was, they would go in search of him. On this tour Je­sus did not de­lib­er­ately per­form any so-called mir­a­cles of heal­ing. Nev­er­the­less, scores of af­flicted found restora­tion of health and hap­pi­ness as a re­sult of the re­con­struc­tive power of the in­tense faith which im­pelled them to seek for heal­ing.

• effect of faith › f. literally compelled healing

149:1.8It is, then, our opin­ion that, in the per­sonal pres­ence of Je­sus, cer­tain forms of pro­found hu­man faith were lit­er­ally and truly com­pelling in the man­i­fes­ta­tion of heal­ing by cer­tain cre­ative forces and per­son­al­i­ties of the uni­verse who were at that time so in­ti­mately as­so­ci­ated with the Son of Man. It there­fore be­comes a fact of rec­ord that Je­sus did fre­quently suf­fer men to heal them­selves in his pres­ence by their pow­er­ful, per­sonal faith.

• warnings regarding faith › sometimes leads to recklessness and presumption

149:4.4And then Je­sus dis­coursed on the dan­gers of cour­age and faith, how they some­times lead un­think­ing souls on to reck­less­ness and pre­sump­tion. He also showed how pru­dence and dis­cre­tion, when car­ried too far, lead to cow­ardice and fail­ure. He ex­horted his hear­ers to strive for orig­i­nal­ity while they shunned all ten­dency to­ward ec­cen­tric­ity. He pleaded for sym­pa­thy with­out sen­ti­men­tal­ity, piety with­out sanc­ti­mo­nious­ness. He taught rev­er­ence free from fear and su­per­sti­tion.

• simple childlike f. is only requisite to enter kingdom

150:5.2“When men and women ask what shall we do to be saved, you shall an­swer, Be­lieve this gospel of the king­dom; ac­cept di­vine for­give­ness. By faith rec­og­nize the in­dwelling spirit of God, whose ac­cep­tance makes you a son of God. Have you not read in the Scrip­tures where it says, ‘In the Lord have I righ­teous­ness and strength.’ Also where the Fa­ther says, ‘My righ­teous­ness is near; my sal­va­tion has gone forth, and my arms shall en­fold my peo­ple.’ ‘My soul shall be joy­ful in the love of my God, for he has clothed me with the gar­ments of sal­va­tion and has cov­ered me with the robe of his righ­teous­ness.’ Have you not also read of the Fa­ther that his name ‘shall be called the Lord our righ­teous­ness.’ ‘Take away the filthy rags of self-righ­teous­ness and clothe my son with the robe of di­vine righ­teous­ness and eter­nal sal­va­tion.’ It is for­ever true, ‘the just shall live by faith.’ En­trance into the Fa­ther’s king­dom is wholly free, but prog­ress—growth in grace—is es­sen­tial to con­tin­u­ance therein.

• effect of faith › we are justified and saved by

150:5.3“Sal­va­tion is the gift of the Fa­ther and is re­vealed by his Sons. Ac­cep­tance by faith on your part makes you a par­taker of the di­vine na­ture, a son or a daugh­ter of God. By faith you are jus­ti­fied; by faith are you saved; and by this same faith are you eter­nally ad­vanced in the way of pro­gres­sive and di­vine per­fec­tion. By faith was Abra­ham jus­ti­fied and made aware of sal­va­tion by the teach­ings of Mel­chiz­e­dek. All down through the ages has this same faith saved the sons of men, but now has a Son come forth from the Fa­ther to make sal­va­tion more real and ac­cept­able.”

• parables regarding faith › mustard seed

151:4.2Af­ter the peo­ple had asked a few ques­tions, Je­sus spoke an­other para­ble: “The king­dom of heaven is like a grain of mus­tard seed which a man sowed in his field. Now a mus­tard seed is the least of seeds, but when it is full grown, it be­comes the great­est of all herbs and is like a tree so that the birds of heaven are able to come and rest in the branches thereof.”

• parables regarding faith › leaven

151:4.3“The king­dom of heaven is also like leaven which a woman took and hid in three mea­sures of meal, and in this way it came about that all of the meal was leav­ened.”

• parables regarding faith › treasure in field

151:4.4“The king­dom of heaven is also like a trea­sure hid­den in a field, which a man dis­cov­ered. In his joy he went forth to sell all he had that he might have the money to buy the field.”

• parables regarding faith › pearl of great price

151:4.5“The king­dom of heaven is also like a mer­chant seek­ing goodly pearls; and hav­ing found one pearl of great price, he went out and sold ev­ery­thing he pos­sessed that he might be able to buy the ex­traor­di­nary pearl.”

• effect of faith › f. literally compelled healing
• historically › made Veronica whole

152:0.3When Je­sus heard this, he took the woman by the hand and, lift­ing her up, said: “Daugh­ter, your faith has made you whole; go in peace.” It was her faith and not her touch that made her whole. And this case is a good il­lus­tra­tion of many ap­par­ently mirac­u­lous cures which at­tended upon Je­sus’ earth ca­reer, but which he in no sense con­sciously willed. The pass­ing of time demon­strated that this woman was re­ally cured of her mal­ady. Her faith was of the sort that laid di­rect hold upon the cre­ative power res­i­dent in the Mas­ter’s per­son. With the faith she had, it was only nec­es­sary to ap­proach the Mas­ter’s per­son. It was not at all nec­es­sary to touch his gar­ment; that was merely the su­per­sti­tious part of her be­lief. Je­sus called this woman, Veron­ica of Cae­sarea-Phi­lippi, into his pres­ence to cor­rect two er­rors which might have lin­gered in her mind, or which might have per­sisted in the minds of those who wit­nessed this heal­ing: He did not want Veron­ica to go away think­ing that her fear in at­tempt­ing to steal her cure had been hon­ored, or that her su­per­sti­tion in as­so­ci­at­ing the touch of his gar­ment with her heal­ing had been ef­fec­tive. He de­sired all to know that it was her pure and liv­ing faith that had wrought the cure.

• warnings regarding faith › science will displace materialistic f.

155:3.6Je­sus warned his be­liev­ers that, if their re­li­gious long­ings were only ma­te­rial, in­creas­ing knowl­edge of na­ture would, by pro­gres­sive dis­place­ment of the sup­posed super­nat­u­ral ori­gin of things, ul­ti­mately de­prive them of their faith in God. But that, if their re­li­gion were spir­i­tual, never could the prog­ress of phys­i­cal sci­ence dis­turb their faith in eter­nal re­al­i­ties and di­vine val­ues.

• effect of faith › locates invisible Father

155:6.4Your re­li­gion shall change from the mere in­tel­lec­tual be­lief in tra­di­tional au­thor­ity to the ac­tual ex­pe­ri­ence of that liv­ing faith which is able to grasp the re­al­ity of God and all that re­lates to the di­vine spirit of the Fa­ther. The re­li­gion of the mind ties you hope­lessly to the past; the re­li­gion of the spirit con­sists in pro­gres­sive rev­e­la­tion and ever beck­ons you on to­ward higher and holier achieve­ments in spir­i­tual ide­als and eter­nal re­al­i­ties.

• effect of faith › faint flickers sufficient for survival

155:6.17Now, mis­take not, my Fa­ther will ever re­spond to the faintest flicker of faith. He takes note of the phys­i­cal and su­per­sti­tious emo­tions of the prim­i­tive man. And with those hon­est but fear­ful souls whose faith is so weak that it amounts to lit­tle more than an in­tel­lec­tual con­for­mity to a pas­sive at­ti­tude of as­sent to re­li­gions of au­thor­ity, the Fa­ther is ever alert to honor and fos­ter even all such fee­ble at­tempts to reach out for him. But you who have been called out of dark­ness into the light are ex­pected to be­lieve with a whole heart; your faith shall dom­i­nate the com­bined at­ti­tudes of body, mind, and spirit.

• simple childlike f. is only requisite to enter kingdom

157:2.2When Je­sus had thus spo­ken, he with­drew and pre­pared for the evening con­fer­ence with his fol­low­ers. At this con­fer­ence it was de­cided to un­der­take a united mis­sion through­out all the cities and vil­lages of the De­capo­lis as soon as Je­sus and the twelve should re­turn from their pro­posed visit to Cae­sarea-Phi­lippi. The Mas­ter par­tic­i­pated in plan­ning for the De­capo­lis mis­sion and, in dis­miss­ing the com­pany, said: “I say to you, be­ware of the leaven of the Phar­isees and the Sad­ducees. Be not de­ceived by their show of much learn­ing and by their pro­found loy­alty to the forms of re­li­gion. Be only con­cerned with the spirit of liv­ing truth and the power of true re­li­gion. It is not the fear of a dead re­li­gion that will save you but rather your faith in a liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence in the spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties of the king­dom. Do not al­low your­selves to be­come blinded by prej­u­dice and par­a­lyzed by fear. Nei­ther per­mit rev­er­ence for the tra­di­tions so to per­vert your un­der­stand­ing that your eyes see not and your ears hear not. It is not the pur­pose of true re­li­gion merely to bring peace but rather to in­sure prog­ress. And there can be no peace in the heart or prog­ress in the mind un­less you fall whole­heart­edly in love with truth, the ide­als of eter­nal re­al­i­ties. The is­sues of life and death are be­ing set be­fore you—the sin­ful plea­sures of time against the righ­teous re­al­i­ties of eter­nity. Even now you should be­gin to find de­liv­er­ance from the bond­age of fear and doubt as you en­ter upon the liv­ing of the new life of faith and hope. And when the feel­ings of ser­vice for your fel­low men arise within your soul, do not sti­fle them; when the emo­tions of love for your neigh­bor well up within your heart, give ex­pres­sion to such urges of af­fec­tion in in­tel­li­gent min­istry to the real needs of your fel­lows.”

• Jesus’ faith › Jesus has faith in us

157:4.6Je­sus was be­gin­ning to have faith in the loy­alty and in­tegrity of his apos­tles. The Mas­ter con­ceived that a faith which could stand what his cho­sen rep­re­sen­ta­tives had re­cently passed through would un­doubt­edly en­dure the fiery tri­als which were just ahead and emerge from the ap­par­ent wreck­age of all their hopes into the new light of a new dis­pen­sa­tion and thereby be able to go forth to en­lighten a world sit­ting in dark­ness. On this day the Mas­ter be­gan to be­lieve in the faith of his apos­tles, save one.

• defined as › prerequisite for miracles, spiritual work
• effect of faith › all things possible to him who believes
• warnings regarding faith › works of f. come not forth from unbelief

158:5.2When Je­sus had lis­tened to this recital, he touched the kneel­ing fa­ther and bade him rise while he gave the near-by apos­tles a search­ing sur­vey. Then said Je­sus to all those who stood be­fore him: “O faith­less and per­verse gen­er­a­tion, how long shall I bear with you? How long shall I be with you? How long ere you learn that the works of faith come not forth at the bid­ding of doubt­ing un­be­lief?” And then, point­ing to the be­wil­dered fa­ther, Je­sus said, “Bring hither your son.” And when James had brought the lad be­fore Je­sus, he asked, “How long has the boy been af­flicted in this way?” The fa­ther an­swered, “Since he was a very young child.” And as they talked, the youth was seized with a vi­o­lent at­tack and fell in their midst, gnash­ing his teeth and foam­ing at the mouth. Af­ter a suc­ces­sion of vi­o­lent con­vul­sions he lay there be­fore them as one dead. Now did the fa­ther again kneel at Je­sus’ feet while he im­plored the Mas­ter, say­ing: “If you can cure him, I be­seech you to have com­pas­sion on us and de­liver us from this af­flic­tion.” And when Je­sus heard these words, he looked down into the fa­ther’s anx­ious face, say­ing: “Ques­tion not my Fa­ther’s power of love, only the sin­cer­ity and reach of your faith. All things are pos­si­ble to him who re­ally be­lieves.” And then James of Safed spoke those long-to-be-re­mem­bered words of com­min­gled faith and doubt, “Lord, I be­lieve. I pray you help my un­be­lief.”

• exercise f. at our command

158:6.2And Je­sus an­swered Thomas, say­ing: “Ev­ery­thing which your breth­ren heard on the moun­tain shall be re­vealed to you in due sea­son. But I will now show you the cause of your de­feat in that which you so un­wisely at­tempted. While your Mas­ter and his com­pan­ions, your breth­ren, as­cended yon­der moun­tain yes­ter­day to seek for a larger knowl­edge of the Fa­ther’s will and to ask for a richer en­dow­ment of wis­dom ef­fec­tively to do that di­vine will, you who re­mained on watch here with in­struc­tions to strive to ac­quire the mind of spir­i­tual in­sight and to pray with us for a fuller rev­e­la­tion of the Fa­ther’s will, failed to ex­er­cise the faith at your com­mand but, in­stead, yielded to the temp­ta­tion and fell into your old evil ten­den­cies to seek for your­selves pre­ferred places in the king­dom of heaven—the ma­te­rial and tem­po­ral king­dom which you per­sist in con­tem­plat­ing. And you cling to these er­ro­neous con­cepts in spite of the re­it­er­ated dec­la­ra­tion that my king­dom is not of this world.

• defined as › prerequisite for miracles, spiritual work
• warnings regarding faith › walk by f. not by sight

158:6.4“How long will it take you to learn that you can­not time-shorten the course of es­tab­lished nat­u­ral phe­nom­ena ex­cept when such things are in ac­cor­dance with the Fa­ther’s will? nor can you do spir­i­tual work in the ab­sence of spir­i­tual power. And you can do nei­ther of these, even when their po­ten­tial is pres­ent, with­out the ex­is­tence of that third and es­sen­tial hu­man fac­tor, the per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence of the pos­ses­sion of liv­ing faith. Must you al­ways have ma­te­rial man­i­fes­ta­tions as an at­trac­tion for the spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties of the king­dom? Can you not grasp the spirit sig­nif­i­cance of my mis­sion with­out the vis­i­ble ex­hi­bi­tion of un­usual works? When can you be de­pended upon to ad­here to the higher and spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties of the king­dom re­gard­less of the out­ward ap­pear­ance of all ma­te­rial man­i­fes­ta­tions?”

• defined as › is to religion what sails are to a ship

159:3.8The world is filled with hun­gry souls who fam­ish in the very pres­ence of the bread of life; men die search­ing for the very God who lives within them. Men seek for the trea­sures of the king­dom with yearn­ing hearts and weary feet when they are all within the im­me­di­ate grasp of liv­ing faith. Faith is to re­li­gion what sails are to a ship; it is an ad­di­tion of power, not an added bur­den of life. There is but one strug­gle for those who en­ter the king­dom, and that is to fight the good fight of faith. The be­liever has only one bat­tle, and that is against doubt—un­be­lief.

• effect of faith › expands mind, reinforces personality, enhances power to love and be loved

159:3.12When my chil­dren once be­come self-con­scious of the as­sur­ance of the di­vine pres­ence, such a faith will ex­pand the mind, en­no­ble the soul, re­in­force the per­son­al­ity, aug­ment the hap­pi­ness, deepen the spirit per­cep­tion, and en­hance the power to love and be loved.

• simple childlike f. is only requisite to enter kingdom

163:2.4Then An­drew brought to Je­sus a cer­tain rich young man who was a de­vout be­liever, and who de­sired to re­ceive or­di­na­tion. This young man, Mata­dor­mus, was a mem­ber of the Je­ru­sa­lem San­hedrin; he had heard Je­sus teach and had been sub­se­quently in­structed in the gospel of the king­dom by Pe­ter and the other apos­tles. Je­sus talked with Mata­dor­mus con­cern­ing the re­quire­ments of or­di­na­tion and re­quested that he de­fer de­ci­sion un­til af­ter he had thought more fully about the mat­ter. Early the next morn­ing, as Je­sus was go­ing for a walk, this young man ac­costed him and said: “Mas­ter, I would know from you the as­sur­ances of eter­nal life. See­ing that I have ob­served all the com­mand­ments from my youth, I would like to know what more I must do to gain eter­nal life?” In an­swer to this ques­tion Je­sus said: “If you keep all the com­mand­ments—do not com­mit adul­tery, do not kill, do not steal, do not bear false wit­ness, do not de­fraud, honor your par­ents—you do well, but sal­va­tion is the re­ward of faith, not merely of works. Do you be­lieve this gospel of the king­dom?” And Mata­dor­mus an­swered: “Yes, Mas­ter, I do be­lieve ev­ery­thing you and your apos­tles have taught me.” And Je­sus said, “Then are you in­deed my dis­ci­ple and a child of the king­dom.”

• historically › evangelists sent forth wholly unprovided for

163:4.123. Faith and trust. They must go forth on this short mis­sion wholly un­pro­vided for; they must trust the Fa­ther for food and shel­ter and all other things need­ful.

• action necessary for Josiah’s healing

164:3.142. As the blind man had not asked for heal­ing, and since the faith he had was slight, these ma­te­rial acts were sug­gested for the pur­pose of en­cour­ag­ing him. He did be­lieve in the su­per­sti­tion of the ef­fi­cacy of spit­tle, and he knew the pool of Siloam was a semisa­cred place. But he would hardly have gone there had it not been nec­es­sary to wash away the clay of his anoint­ing. There was just enough cer­e­mony about the trans­ac­tion to in­duce him to act.

• effect of faith › f. literally compelled healing
• historically › made leper whole

166:2.5As the Samar­i­tan re­mained kneel­ing at Je­sus’ feet, the Mas­ter, look­ing about at the twelve, es­pe­cially at Si­mon Ze­lo­tes, said: “Were not ten cleansed? Where, then, are the other nine, the Jews? Only one, this alien, has re­turned to give glory to God.” And then he said to the Samar­i­tan, “Arise and go your way; your faith has made you whole.”

• fight the good fight of f.

166:3.4“But herein is the dan­ger to all who would post­pone their en­trance into the king­dom while they con­tinue to pur­sue the plea­sures of im­ma­tu­rity and in­dulge the sat­is­fac­tions of self­ish­ness: Hav­ing re­fused to en­ter the king­dom as a spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence, they may sub­se­quently seek en­trance thereto when the glory of the bet­ter way be­comes re­vealed in the age to come. And when, there­fore, those who spurned the king­dom when I came in the like­ness of hu­man­ity seek to find an en­trance when it is re­vealed in the like­ness of di­vin­ity, then will I say to all such self­ish ones: I know not whence you are. You had your chance to pre­pare for this heav­enly cit­i­zen­ship, but you re­fused all such prof­fers of mercy; you re­jected all in­vi­ta­tions to come while the door was open. Now, to you who have re­fused sal­va­tion, the door is shut. This door is not open to those who would en­ter the king­dom for self­ish glory. Sal­va­tion is not for those who are un­will­ing to pay the price of whole­hearted ded­i­ca­tion to do­ing my Fa­ther’s will. When in spirit and soul you have turned your backs upon the Fa­ther’s king­dom, it is use­less in mind and body to stand be­fore this door and knock, say­ing, ‘Lord, open to us; we would also be great in the king­dom.’ Then will I de­clare that you are not of my fold. I will not re­ceive you to be among those who have fought the good fight of faith and won the re­ward of un­selfish ser­vice in the king­dom on earth. And when you say, ‘Did we not eat and drink with you, and did you not teach in our streets?’ then shall I again de­clare that you are spir­i­tual strangers; that we were not fel­low ser­vants in the Fa­ther’s min­istry of mercy on earth; that I do not know you; and then shall the Judge of all the earth say to you: ‘De­part from us, all you who have taken de­light in the works of in­iq­uity.’

• take kingdom by persistent assaults of

166:3.5“But fear not; ev­ery one who sin­cerely de­sires to find eter­nal life by en­trance into the king­dom of God shall cer­tainly find such ev­er­last­ing sal­va­tion. But you who refuse this sal­va­tion will some day see the proph­ets of the seed of Abra­ham sit down with the be­liev­ers of the gen­tile na­tions in this glo­ri­fied king­dom to par­take of the bread of life and to re­fresh them­selves with the wa­ter thereof. And they who shall thus take the king­dom in spir­i­tual power and by the per­sis­tent as­saults of liv­ing faith will come from the north and the south and from the east and the west. And, be­hold, many who are first will be last, and those who are last will many times be first.”

• parables regarding faith › fig tree

166:4.9“There was a cer­tain man who planted a fig tree in his yard, and when he had many times sought fruit thereon and found none, he called the vine­dressers be­fore him and said: ‘Here have I come these three sea­sons look­ing for fruit on this fig tree and have found none. Cut down this bar­ren tree; why should it en­cum­ber the ground?’ But the head gar­dener an­swered his mas­ter: ‘Let it alone for one more year so that I may dig around it and put on fer­til­izer, and then, next year, if it bears no fruit, it shall be cut down.’ And when they had thus com­plied with the laws of fruit­ful­ness, since the tree was liv­ing and good, they were re­warded with an abun­dant yield.

• our f. limits Father’s bestowal of spiritual gifts

166:4.11“The Fa­ther’s hu­man chil­dren have equal ca­pac­ity for the re­cep­tion of ma­te­rial bless­ings; there­fore does he be­stow things phys­i­cal upon the chil­dren of men with­out dis­crim­i­na­tion. When it comes to the be­stowal of spir­i­tual gifts, the Fa­ther is lim­ited by man’s ca­pac­ity for re­ceiv­ing these di­vine en­dow­ments. Al­though the Fa­ther is no re­specter of per­sons, in the be­stowal of spir­i­tual gifts he is lim­ited by man’s faith and by his will­ing­ness al­ways to abide by the Fa­ther’s will.”

• simple childlike f. is only requisite to enter kingdom

170:2.211. Faith, sin­cer­ity. To come as a lit­tle child, to re­ceive the be­stowal of son­ship as a gift; to sub­mit to the do­ing of the Fa­ther’s will with­out ques­tion­ing and in the full con­fi­dence and gen­uine trust­ful­ness of the Fa­ther’s wis­dom; to come into the king­dom free from prej­u­dice and pre­con­cep­tion; to be open-minded and teach­able like an un­spoiled child.

• effect of faith › righteousness acquired by

170:3.1Je­sus was al­ways try­ing to im­press upon his apos­tles and dis­ci­ples that they must ac­quire, by faith, a righ­teous­ness which would ex­ceed the righ­teous­ness of slav­ish works which some of the scribes and Phar­isees pa­raded so vain­glo­ri­ously be­fore the world.

• simple childlike f. is only requisite to enter kingdom
• warnings regarding faith › should be childlike, not childish

170:3.2Though Je­sus taught that faith, sim­ple child­like be­lief, is the key to the door of the king­dom, he also taught that, hav­ing en­tered the door, there are the pro­gres­sive steps of righ­teous­ness which ev­ery be­liev­ing child must as­cend in or­der to grow up to the full stature of the ro­bust sons of God.

170:3.3It is in the con­sid­er­a­tion of the tech­nique of re­ceiv­ing God’s for­give­ness that the at­tain­ment of the righ­teous­ness of the king­dom is re­vealed. Faith is the price you pay for en­trance into the fam­ily of God; but for­give­ness is the act of God which ac­cepts your faith as the price of ad­mis­sion. And the re­cep­tion of the for­give­ness of God by a king­dom be­liever in­volves a def­i­nite and ac­tual ex­pe­ri­ence and con­sists in the fol­low­ing four steps, the king­dom steps of in­ner righ­teous­ness:

• simple childlike f. is only requisite to enter kingdom

170:5.13Je­sus fore­saw that a so­cial or­ga­ni­za­tion, or church, would fol­low the prog­ress of the true spir­i­tual king­dom, and that is why he never op­posed the apos­tles’ prac­tic­ing the rite of John’s bap­tism. He taught that the truth-lov­ing soul, the one who hungers and thirsts for righ­teous­ness, for God, is ad­mit­ted by faith to the spir­i­tual king­dom; at the same time the apos­tles taught that such a be­liever is ad­mit­ted to the so­cial or­ga­ni­za­tion of dis­ci­ples by the out­ward rite of bap­tism.

• Jesus’ faith › Jesus has faith in us

171:7.5Je­sus was never in a hurry. He had time to com­fort his fel­low men “as he passed by.” And he al­ways made his friends feel at ease. He was a charm­ing lis­tener. He never en­gaged in the med­dle­some prob­ing of the souls of his as­so­ciates. As he com­forted hun­gry minds and min­is­tered to thirsty souls, the re­cip­i­ents of his mercy did not so much feel that they were con­fess­ing to him as that they were con­fer­ring with him. They had un­bounded con­fi­dence in him be­cause they saw he had so much faith in them.

• Jesus’ faith › Jesus has faith in us

171:7.8The Mas­ter could dis­cern sav­ing faith in the gross su­per­sti­tion of the woman who sought heal­ing by touch­ing the hem of his gar­ment. He was al­ways ready and will­ing to stop a ser­mon or de­tain a mul­ti­tude while he min­is­tered to the needs of a sin­gle per­son, even to a lit­tle child. Great things hap­pened not only be­cause peo­ple had faith in Je­sus, but also be­cause Je­sus had so much faith in them.

• warnings regarding faith › walk by f. not by sight

174:0.2This morn­ing he greeted each of the twelve with a per­sonal salu­ta­tion. To An­drew he said: “Be not dis­mayed by the events just ahead. Keep a firm hold on your breth­ren and see that they do not find you down­cast.” To Pe­ter he said: “Put not your trust in the arm of flesh nor in weapons of steel. Es­tab­lish your­self on the spir­i­tual foun­da­tions of the eter­nal rocks.” To James he said: “Fal­ter not be­cause of out­ward ap­pear­ances. Re­main firm in your faith, and you shall soon know of the re­al­ity of that which you be­lieve.” To John he said: “Be gen­tle; love even your en­e­mies; be tol­er­ant. And re­mem­ber that I have trusted you with many things.” To Na­than­iel he said: “Judge not by ap­pear­ances; re­main firm in your faith when all ap­pears to van­ish; be true to your com­mis­sion as an am­bas­sador of the king­dom.” To Philip he said: “Be un­moved by the events now im­pend­ing. Re­main un­shaken, even when you can­not see the way. Be loyal to your oath of con­se­cra­tion.” To Mat­thew he said: “For­get not the mercy that re­ceived you into the king­dom. Let no man cheat you of your eter­nal re­ward. As you have with­stood the in­cli­na­tions of the mor­tal na­ture, be will­ing to be stead­fast.” To Thomas he said: “No mat­ter how dif­fi­cult it may be, just now you must walk by faith and not by sight. Doubt not that I am able to fin­ish the work I have be­gun, and that I shall even­tu­ally see all of my faith­ful am­bas­sadors in the king­dom be­yond.” To the Al­pheus twins he said: “Do not al­low the things which you can­not un­der­stand to crush you. Be true to the af­fec­tions of your hearts and put not your trust in ei­ther great men or the chang­ing at­ti­tude of the peo­ple. Stand by your breth­ren.” And to Si­mon Ze­lo­tes he said: “Si­mon, you may be crushed by dis­ap­point­ment, but your spirit shall rise above all that may come upon you. What you have failed to learn from me, my spirit will teach you. Seek the true re­al­i­ties of the spirit and cease to be at­tracted by un­real and ma­te­rial shad­ows.” And to Ju­das Is­car­iot he said: “Ju­das, I have loved you and have prayed that you would love your breth­ren. Be not weary in well do­ing; and I would warn you to be­ware the slip­pery paths of flat­tery and the poi­son darts of ridicule.”

• parables regarding faith › grain of wheat

174:5.8“But to both Jew and gen­tile I de­clare the hour has about come when the Son of Man will be glo­ri­fied. You well know that, ex­cept a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it abides alone; but if it dies in good soil, it springs up again to life and bears much fruit. He who self­ishly loves his life stands in dan­ger of los­ing it; but he who is will­ing to lay down his life for my sake and the gospel’s shall en­joy a more abun­dant ex­is­tence on earth and in heaven, life eter­nal. If you will truly fol­low me, even af­ter I have gone to my Fa­ther, then shall you be­come my dis­ci­ples and the sin­cere ser­vants of your fel­low mor­tals.

• parables regarding faith › new wine into fresh wine skins

176:1.7When Je­sus heard this, he was thought­ful for some time and then said: “You ever err since you al­ways try to at­tach the new teach­ing to the old; you are de­ter­mined to mis­un­der­stand all my teach­ing; you in­sist on in­ter­pret­ing the gospel in ac­cor­dance with your es­tab­lished be­liefs. Nev­er­the­less, I will try to en­lighten you.”

• parables regarding faith › fig tree

176:2.6“And now con­cern­ing the tra­vail of Je­ru­sa­lem, about which I have spo­ken to you, even this gen­er­a­tion will not pass away un­til my words are ful­filled; but con­cern­ing the times of the com­ing again of the Son of Man, no one in heaven or on earth may pre­sume to speak. But you should be wise re­gard­ing the ripen­ing of an age; you should be alert to dis­cern the signs of the times. You know when the fig tree shows its ten­der branches and puts forth its leaves that sum­mer is near. Like­wise, when the world has passed through the long win­ter of ma­te­rial-mind­ed­ness and you dis­cern the com­ing of the spir­i­tual spring­time of a new dis­pen­sa­tion, should you know that the sum­mer­time of a new vis­i­ta­tion draws near.

• effect of faith › increasingly manifests fruits of spirit

176:3.3“Each gen­er­a­tion of be­liev­ers should carry on their work, in view of the pos­si­ble re­turn of the Son of Man, ex­actly as each in­di­vid­ual be­liever car­ries for­ward his life­work in view of in­ev­i­ta­ble and ever-im­pend­ing nat­u­ral death. When you have by faith once es­tab­lished your­self as a son of God, noth­ing else mat­ters as re­gards the surety of sur­vival. But make no mis­take! this sur­vival faith is a liv­ing faith, and it in­creas­ingly man­i­fests the fruits of that di­vine spirit which first in­spired it in the hu­man heart. That you have once ac­cepted son­ship in the heav­enly king­dom will not save you in the face of the know­ing and per­sis­tent re­jec­tion of those truths which have to do with the pro­gres­sive spir­i­tual fruit-bear­ing of the sons of God in the flesh. You who have been with me in the Fa­ther’s busi­ness on earth can even now desert the king­dom if you find that you love not the way of the Fa­ther’s ser­vice for man­kind.

• early training makes f. dependable

177:2.2“I know you will prove loyal to the gospel of the king­dom be­cause I can de­pend upon your pres­ent faith and love when these qual­i­ties are grounded upon such an early train­ing as has been your por­tion at home. You are the prod­uct of a home where the par­ents bear each other a sin­cere af­fec­tion, and there­fore you have not been overloved so as in­ju­ri­ously to ex­alt your con­cept of self-im­por­tance. Nei­ther has your per­son­al­ity suf­fered dis­tor­tion in con­se­quence of your par­ents’ love­less ma­neu­ver­ing for your con­fi­dence and loy­alty, the one against the other. You have en­joyed that pa­ren­tal love which in­sures laud­able self-con­fi­dence and which fos­ters nor­mal feel­ings of se­cu­rity. But you have also been for­tu­nate in that your par­ents pos­sessed wis­dom as well as love; and it was wis­dom which led them to with­hold most forms of in­dul­gence and many lux­u­ries which wealth can buy while they sent you to the syn­a­gogue school along with your neigh­bor­hood playfel­lows, and they also en­cour­aged you to learn how to live in this world by per­mit­ting you to have orig­i­nal ex­pe­ri­ence. You came over to the Jor­dan, where we preached and John’s dis­ci­ples bap­tized, with your young friend Amos. Both of you de­sired to go with us. When you re­turned to Je­ru­sa­lem, your par­ents con­sented; Amos’s par­ents re­fused; they loved their son so much that they de­nied him the blessed ex­pe­ri­ence which you have had, even such as you this day en­joy. By run­ning away from home, Amos could have joined us, but in so do­ing he would have wounded love and sac­ri­ficed loy­alty. Even if such a course had been wise, it would have been a ter­ri­ble price to pay for ex­pe­ri­ence, in­de­pen­dence, and lib­erty. Wise par­ents, such as yours, see to it that their chil­dren do not have to wound love or sti­fle loy­alty in or­der to de­velop in­de­pen­dence and en­joy in­vig­o­rat­ing lib­erty when they have grown up to your age.

• parables regarding faith › leaven
• parables regarding faith › mustard seed
• parables regarding faith › seed of living being

178:1.15This gospel of the king­dom is a liv­ing truth. I have told you it is like the leaven in the dough, like the grain of mus­tard seed; and now I de­clare that it is like the seed of the liv­ing be­ing, which, from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion, while it re­mains the same liv­ing seed, un­fail­ingly un­folds it­self in new man­i­fes­ta­tions and grows ac­cept­ably in chan­nels of new adap­ta­tion to the pe­cu­liar needs and con­di­tions of each suc­ces­sive gen­er­a­tion. The rev­e­la­tion I have made to you is a liv­ing rev­e­la­tion, and I de­sire that it shall bear ap­pro­pri­ate fruits in each in­di­vid­ual and in each gen­er­a­tion in ac­cor­dance with the laws of spir­i­tual growth, in­crease, and adap­ta­tive de­vel­op­ment. From gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion this gospel must show in­creas­ing vi­tal­ity and ex­hibit greater depth of spir­i­tual power. It must not be per­mit­ted to be­come merely a sa­cred mem­ory, a mere tra­di­tion about me and the times in which we now live.

180:2.1Then Je­sus stood up again and con­tin­ued teach­ing his apos­tles: “I am the true vine, and my Fa­ther is the hus­band­man. I am the vine, and you are the branches. And the Fa­ther re­quires of me only that you shall bear much fruit. The vine is pruned only to in­crease the fruit­ful­ness of its branches. Ev­ery branch com­ing out of me which bears no fruit, the Fa­ther will take away. Ev­ery branch which bears fruit, the Fa­ther will cleanse that it may bear more fruit. Al­ready are you clean through the word I have spo­ken, but you must con­tinue to be clean. You must abide in me, and I in you; the branch will die if it is sep­a­rated from the vine. As the branch can­not bear fruit ex­cept it abides in the vine, so nei­ther can you yield the fruits of lov­ing ser­vice ex­cept you abide in me. Re­mem­ber: I am the real vine, and you are the liv­ing branches. He who lives in me, and I in him, will bear much fruit of the spirit and ex­pe­ri­ence the su­preme joy of yield­ing this spir­i­tual har­vest. If you will main­tain this liv­ing spir­i­tual con­nec­tion with me, you will bear abun­dant fruit. If you abide in me and my words live in you, you will be able to com­mune freely with me, and then can my liv­ing spirit so in­fuse you that you may ask what­so­ever my spirit wills and do all this with the as­sur­ance that the Fa­ther will grant us our pe­ti­tion. Herein is the Fa­ther glo­ri­fied: that the vine has many liv­ing branches, and that ev­ery branch bears much fruit. And when the world sees these fruit-bear­ing branches—my friends who love one an­other, even as I have loved them—all men will know that you are truly my dis­ci­ples.

180:2.2“As the Fa­ther has loved me, so have I loved you. Live in my love even as I live in the Fa­ther’s love. If you do as I have taught you, you shall abide in my love even as I have kept the Fa­ther’s word and ev­er­more abide in his love.”

180:2.3The Jews had long taught that the Mes­siah would be “a stem aris­ing out of the vine” of David’s an­ces­tors, and in com­mem­o­ra­tion of this olden teach­ing a large em­blem of the grape and its at­tached vine dec­o­rated the en­trance to Herod’s tem­ple. The apos­tles all re­called these things while the Mas­ter talked to them this night in the up­per cham­ber.

180:2.4But great sor­row later at­tended the mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the Mas­ter’s in­fer­ences re­gard­ing prayer. There would have been lit­tle dif­fi­culty about these teach­ings if his ex­act words had been re­mem­bered and sub­se­quently truth­fully re­corded. But as the rec­ord was made, be­liev­ers even­tu­ally re­garded prayer in Je­sus’ name as a sort of su­preme magic, think­ing that they would re­ceive from the Fa­ther any­thing they asked for. For cen­turies hon­est souls have con­tin­ued to wreck their faith against this stum­bling block. How long will it take the world of be­liev­ers to un­der­stand that prayer is not a pro­cess of get­ting your way but rather a pro­gram of tak­ing God’s way, an ex­pe­ri­ence of learn­ing how to rec­og­nize and ex­e­cute the Fa­ther’s will? It is en­tirely true that, when your will has been truly aligned with his, you can ask any­thing con­ceived by that will-union, and it will be granted. And such a will-union is ef­fected by and through Je­sus even as the life of the vine flows into and through the liv­ing branches.

180:2.5When there ex­ists this liv­ing con­nec­tion be­tween di­vin­ity and hu­man­ity, if hu­man­ity should thought­lessly and ig­no­rantly pray for self­ish ease and vain­glo­ri­ous ac­com­plish­ments, there could be only one di­vine an­swer: more and in­creased bear­ing of the fruits of the spirit on the stems of the liv­ing branches. When the branch of the vine is alive, there can be only one an­swer to all its pe­ti­tions: in­creased grape bear­ing. In fact, the branch ex­ists only for, and can do noth­ing ex­cept, fruit bear­ing, yield­ing grapes. So does the true be­liever ex­ist only for the pur­pose of bear­ing the fruits of the spirit: to love man as he him­self has been loved by God—that we should love one an­other, even as Je­sus has loved us.

180:2.6And when the Fa­ther’s hand of dis­ci­pline is laid upon the vine, it is done in love, in or­der that the branches may bear much fruit. And a wise hus­band­man cuts away only the dead and fruit­less branches.

180:2.7Je­sus had great dif­fi­culty in lead­ing even his apos­tles to rec­og­nize that prayer is a func­tion of spirit-born be­liev­ers in the spirit-dom­i­nated king­dom.

• defined as › always triumphant over doubting

182:3.11Be­fore Ju­das and the sol­diers ar­rived, the Mas­ter had fully re­gained his cus­tom­ary poise; the spirit had tri­umphed over the flesh; faith had as­serted it­self over all hu­man ten­den­cies to fear or en­ter­tain doubt. The su­preme test of the full re­al­iza­tion of the hu­man na­ture had been met and ac­cept­ably passed. Once more the Son of Man was pre­pared to face his en­e­mies with equa­nim­ity and in the full as­sur­ance of his in­vin­ci­bil­ity as a mor­tal man un­re­servedly ded­i­cated to the do­ing of his Fa­ther’s will.

• effect of faith › makes truth of sonship with God factual in experience

186:5.9The sal­va­tion of God for the mor­tals of Uran­tia would have been just as ef­fec­tive and unerringly cer­tain if Je­sus had not been put to death by the cruel hands of ig­no­rant mor­tals. If the Mas­ter had been fa­vor­ably re­ceived by the mor­tals of earth and had de­parted from Uran­tia by the vol­un­tary re­lin­quish­ment of his life in the flesh, the fact of the love of God and the mercy of the Son—the fact of son­ship with God—would have in no wise been af­fected. You mor­tals are the sons of God, and only one thing is re­quired to make such a truth fac­tual in your per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence, and that is your spirit-born faith.

• historically › thief on cross showed f.

187:4.1One of the brig­ands railed at Je­sus, say­ing, “If you are the Son of God, why do you not save your­self and us?” But when he had re­proached Je­sus, the other thief, who had many times heard the Mas­ter teach, said: “Do you have no fear even of God? Do you not see that we are suf­fer­ing justly for our deeds, but that this man suf­fers un­justly? Bet­ter that we should seek for­give­ness for our sins and sal­va­tion for our souls.” When Je­sus heard the thief say this, he turned his face to­ward him and smiled ap­prov­ingly. When the male­fac­tor saw the face of Je­sus turned to­ward him, he mus­tered up his cour­age, fanned the flick­er­ing flame of his faith, and said, “Lord, re­mem­ber me when you come into your king­dom.” And then Je­sus said, “Ver­ily, ver­ily, I say to you to­day, you shall some­time be with me in Par­a­dise.”

• have faith in › God and one another

191:2.1Shortly af­ter nine o’clock that evening, af­ter the de­par­ture of Cleopas and Ja­cob, while the Al­pheus twins com­forted Pe­ter, and while Na­than­iel re­mon­strated with An­drew, and as the ten apos­tles were there as­sem­bled in the up­per cham­ber with all the doors bolted for fear of ar­rest, the Mas­ter, in mor­ontia form, sud­denly ap­peared in the midst of them, say­ing: “Peace be upon you. Why are you so fright­ened when I ap­pear, as though you had seen a spirit? Did I not tell you about these things when I was pres­ent with you in the flesh? Did I not say to you that the chief priests and the rulers would de­liver me up to be killed, that one of your own num­ber would be­tray me, and that on the third day I would rise? Where­fore all your doubt­ings and all this dis­cus­sion about the re­ports of the women, Cleopas and Ja­cob, and even Pe­ter? How long will you doubt my words and refuse to be­lieve my promises? And now that you ac­tu­ally see me, will you be­lieve? Even now one of you is ab­sent. When you are gath­ered to­gether once more, and af­ter all of you know of a cer­tainty that the Son of Man has risen from the grave, go hence into Gal­i­lee. Have faith in God; have faith in one an­other; and so shall you en­ter into the new ser­vice of the king­dom of heaven. I will tarry in Je­ru­sa­lem with you un­til you are ready to go into Gal­i­lee. My peace I leave with you.”

• effect of faith › reveals our light to world

191:5.3“Peace be upon you. For a full week have I tar­ried that I might ap­pear again when you were all pres­ent to hear once more the com­mis­sion to go into all the world and preach this gospel of the king­dom. Again I tell you: As the Fa­ther sent me into the world, so send I you. As I have re­vealed the Fa­ther, so shall you re­veal the di­vine love, not merely with words, but in your daily liv­ing. I send you forth, not to love the souls of men, but rather to love men. You are not merely to pro­claim the joys of heaven but also to ex­hibit in your daily ex­pe­ri­ence these spirit re­al­i­ties of the di­vine life since you al­ready have eter­nal life, as the gift of God, through faith. When you have faith, when power from on high, the Spirit of Truth, has come upon you, you will not hide your light here be­hind closed doors; you will make known the love and the mercy of God to all man­kind. Through fear you now flee from the facts of a dis­agree­able ex­pe­ri­ence, but when you shall have been bap­tized with the Spirit of Truth, you will bravely and joy­ously go forth to meet the new ex­pe­ri­ences of pro­claim­ing the good news of eter­nal life in the king­dom of God. You may tarry here and in Gal­i­lee for a short sea­son while you re­cover from the shock of the tran­si­tion from the false se­cu­rity of the au­thor­ity of tra­di­tion­al­ism to the new or­der of the au­thor­ity of facts, truth, and faith in the su­preme re­al­i­ties of liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence. Your mis­sion to the world is founded on the fact that I lived a God-re­veal­ing life among you; on the truth that you and all other men are the sons of God; and it shall con­sist in the life which you will live among men—the ac­tual and liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence of lov­ing men and serv­ing them, even as I have loved and served you. Let faith re­veal your light to the world; let the rev­e­la­tion of truth open the eyes blinded by tra­di­tion; let your lov­ing ser­vice ef­fec­tu­ally de­stroy the prej­u­dice en­gen­dered by ig­no­rance. By so draw­ing close to your fel­low men in un­der­stand­ing sym­pa­thy and with un­selfish de­vo­tion, you will lead them into a sav­ing knowl­edge of the Fa­ther’s love. The Jews have ex­tolled good­ness; the Greeks have ex­alted beauty; the Hin­dus preach de­vo­tion; the far­away as­cetics teach rev­er­ence; the Ro­mans de­mand loy­alty; but I re­quire of my dis­ci­ples life, even a life of lov­ing ser­vice for your broth­ers in the flesh.”

• defined as › confidence in cosmic reliability not dependent on sight

191:5.5When Thomas heard these words, he fell on his knees be­fore the mor­ontia Mas­ter and ex­claimed, “I be­lieve! My Lord and my Mas­ter!” Then said Je­sus to Thomas: “You have be­lieved, Thomas, be­cause you have re­ally seen and heard me. Blessed are those in the ages to come who will be­lieve even though they have not seen with the eye of flesh nor heard with the mor­tal ear.”

• simple childlike f. is only requisite to enter kingdom

192:2.9Je­sus next talked with Thomas and Na­than­iel. Said he to Thomas, “Thomas, do you serve me?” Thomas replied, “Yes, Lord, I serve you now and al­ways.” Then said Je­sus: “If you would serve me, serve my breth­ren in the flesh even as I have served you. And be not weary in this well-do­ing but per­se­vere as one who has been or­dained by God for this ser­vice of love. When you have fin­ished your ser­vice with me on earth, you shall serve with me in glory. Thomas, you must cease doubt­ing; you must grow in faith and the knowl­edge of truth. Be­lieve in God like a child but cease to act so child­ishly. Have cour­age; be strong in faith and mighty in the king­dom of God.”

• effect of faith › makes truth of sonship with God factual in experience
• have faith in › Jesus’ words

193:0.3“And now you should give ear to my words lest you again make the mis­take of hear­ing my teach­ing with the mind while in your hearts you fail to com­pre­hend the mean­ing. From the be­gin­ning of my so­journ as one of you, I taught you that my one pur­pose was to re­veal my Fa­ther in heaven to his chil­dren on earth. I have lived the God-re­veal­ing be­stowal that you might ex­pe­ri­ence the God-know­ing ca­reer. I have re­vealed God as your Fa­ther in heaven; I have re­vealed you as the sons of God on earth. It is a fact that God loves you, his sons. By faith in my word this fact be­comes an eter­nal and liv­ing truth in your hearts. When, by liv­ing faith, you be­come di­vinely God-con­scious, you are then born of the spirit as chil­dren of light and life, even the eter­nal life where­with you shall as­cend the uni­verse of uni­verses and at­tain the ex­pe­ri­ence of find­ing God the Fa­ther on Par­a­dise.

• defined as › only passport to completion of reality, eternity of life

193:1.2“Peace be upon you. You re­joice to know that I am the res­ur­rec­tion and the life, but this will avail you noth­ing un­less you are first born of the eter­nal spirit, thereby com­ing to pos­sess, by faith, the gift of eter­nal life. If you are the faith sons of my Fa­ther, you shall never die; you shall not per­ish. The gospel of the king­dom has taught you that all men are the sons of God. And this good news con­cern­ing the love of the heav­enly Fa­ther for his chil­dren on earth must be car­ried to all the world. The time has come when you wor­ship God nei­ther on Ger­izim nor at Je­ru­sa­lem, but where you are, as you are, in spirit and in truth. It is your faith that saves your souls. Sal­va­tion is the gift of God to all who be­lieve they are his sons. But be not de­ceived; while sal­va­tion is the free gift of God and is be­stowed upon all who ac­cept it by faith, there fol­lows the ex­pe­ri­ence of bear­ing the fruits of this spirit life as it is lived in the flesh. The ac­cep­tance of the doc­trine of the fa­ther­hood of God im­plies that you also freely ac­cept the as­so­ci­ated truth of the broth­er­hood of man. And if man is your brother, he is even more than your neigh­bor, whom the Fa­ther re­quires you to love as your­self. Your brother, be­ing of your own fam­ily, you will not only love with a fam­ily af­fec­tion, but you will also serve as you would serve your­self. And you will thus love and serve your brother be­cause you, be­ing my breth­ren, have been thus loved and served by me. Go, then, into all the world telling this good news to all crea­tures of ev­ery race, tribe, and na­tion. My spirit shall go be­fore you, and I will be with you al­ways.”

• parables regarding faith › vine and branches

193:2.2“Peace be upon you. You re­joice to know that the Son of Man has risen from the dead be­cause you thereby know that you and your breth­ren shall also sur­vive mor­tal death. But such sur­vival is de­pen­dent on your hav­ing been pre­vi­ously born of the spirit of truth-seek­ing and God-find­ing. The bread of life and the wa­ter thereof are given only to those who hunger for truth and thirst for righ­teous­ness—for God. The fact that the dead rise is not the gospel of the king­dom. These great truths and these uni­verse facts are all re­lated to this gospel in that they are a part of the re­sult of be­liev­ing the good news and are em­braced in the sub­se­quent ex­pe­ri­ence of those who, by faith, be­come, in deed and in truth, the ev­er­last­ing sons of the eter­nal God. My Fa­ther sent me into the world to pro­claim this sal­va­tion of son­ship to all men. And so send I you abroad to preach this sal­va­tion of son­ship. Sal­va­tion is the free gift of God, but those who are born of the spirit will im­me­di­ately be­gin to show forth the fruits of the spirit in lov­ing ser­vice to their fel­low crea­tures. And the fruits of the di­vine spirit which are yielded in the lives of spirit-born and God-know­ing mor­tals are: lov­ing ser­vice, un­selfish de­vo­tion, coura­geous loy­alty, sin­cere fair­ness, en­light­ened hon­esty, undy­ing hope, con­fid­ing trust, mer­ci­ful min­istry, un­fail­ing good­ness, for­giv­ing tol­er­ance, and en­dur­ing peace. If pro­fessed be­liev­ers bear not these fruits of the di­vine spirit in their lives, they are dead; the Spirit of Truth is not in them; they are use­less branches on the liv­ing vine, and they soon will be taken away. My Fa­ther re­quires of the chil­dren of faith that they bear much spirit fruit. If, there­fore, you are not fruit­ful, he will dig about your roots and cut away your un­fruit­ful branches. In­creas­ingly, must you yield the fruits of the spirit as you pro­gress heav­en­ward in the king­dom of God. You may en­ter the king­dom as a child, but the Fa­ther re­quires that you grow up, by grace, to the full stature of spir­i­tual adult­hood. And when you go abroad to tell all na­tions the good news of this gospel, I will go be­fore you, and my Spirit of Truth shall abide in your hearts. My peace I leave with you.”

• effect of faith › triumphs over evil, sin, and iniquity

194:3.2Many things which hap­pen in the course of a hu­man life are hard to un­der­stand, dif­fi­cult to rec­on­cile with the idea that this is a uni­verse in which truth pre­vails and in which righ­teous­ness tri­umphs. It so of­ten ap­pears that slan­der, lies, dis­hon­esty, and un­righ­teous­ness—sin—pre­vail. Does faith, af­ter all, tri­umph over evil, sin, and in­iq­uity? It does. And the life and death of Je­sus are the eter­nal proof that the truth of good­ness and the faith of the spirit-led crea­ture will al­ways be vin­di­cated. They taunted Je­sus on the cross, say­ing, “Let us see if God will come and de­liver him.” It looked dark on that day of the cru­ci­fix­ion, but it was glo­ri­ously bright on the res­ur­rec­tion morn­ing; it was still brighter and more joy­ous on the day of Pen­te­cost. The re­li­gions of pes­simistic de­spair seek to ob­tain re­lease from the bur­dens of life; they crave ex­tinc­tion in end­less slum­ber and rest. These are the re­li­gions of prim­i­tive fear and dread. The re­li­gion of Je­sus is a new gospel of faith to be pro­claimed to strug­gling hu­man­ity. This new re­li­gion is founded on faith, hope, and love.

• facts never quarrel with

195:7.1How fool­ish it is for ma­te­rial-minded man to al­low such vul­ner­a­ble the­o­ries as those of a mech­a­nis­tic uni­verse to de­prive him of the vast spir­i­tual re­sources of the per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence of true re­li­gion. Facts never quar­rel with real spir­i­tual faith; the­o­ries may. Bet­ter that sci­ence should be de­voted to the de­struc­tion of su­per­sti­tion rather than at­tempt­ing the over­throw of re­li­gious faith—hu­man be­lief in spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties and di­vine val­ues.

• warnings regarding faith › ecclesiasticism incompatible with

195:10.8Ec­cle­si­as­ti­cism is at once and for­ever in­com­pat­i­ble with that liv­ing faith, grow­ing spirit, and first­hand ex­pe­ri­ence of the faith-com­rades of Je­sus in the broth­er­hood of man in the spir­i­tual as­so­ci­a­tion of the king­dom of heaven. The praise­wor­thy de­sire to pre­serve tra­di­tions of past achieve­ment of­ten leads to the de­fense of out­grown sys­tems of wor­ship. The well-meant de­sire to fos­ter an­cient thought sys­tems ef­fec­tu­ally pre­vents the spon­sor­ing of new and ad­e­quate means and meth­ods de­signed to sat­isfy the spir­i­tual long­ings of the ex­pand­ing and ad­vanc­ing minds of mod­ern men. Like­wise, the Chris­tian churches of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury stand as great, but wholly un­con­scious, ob­sta­cles to the im­me­di­ate ad­vance of the real gospel—the teach­ings of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth.

• defined as › positive leading of indwelling divine presence

196:0.1Je­sus en­joyed a sub­lime and whole­hearted faith in God. He ex­pe­ri­enced the or­di­nary ups and downs of mor­tal ex­is­tence, but he never re­li­giously doubted the cer­tainty of God’s watch­care and guid­ance. His faith was the out­growth of the in­sight born of the ac­tiv­ity of the di­vine pres­ence, his in­dwelling Ad­juster. His faith was nei­ther tra­di­tional nor merely in­tel­lec­tual; it was wholly per­sonal and purely spir­i­tual.

• Jesus’ faith › his great contribution: not new ideas about Father but a new and higher type of living f.
• warnings regarding faith › what f. isn’t

196:0.3Je­sus did not cling to faith in God as would a strug­gling soul at war with the uni­verse and at death grips with a hos­tile and sin­ful world; he did not re­sort to faith merely as a con­so­la­tion in the midst of dif­fi­cul­ties or as a com­fort in threat­ened de­spair; faith was not just an il­lu­sory com­pen­sa­tion for the un­pleas­ant re­al­i­ties and the sor­rows of liv­ing. In the very face of all the nat­u­ral dif­fi­cul­ties and the tem­po­ral con­tra­dic­tions of mor­tal ex­is­tence, he ex­pe­ri­enced the tran­quil­lity of su­preme and un­ques­tioned trust in God and felt the tremen­dous thrill of liv­ing, by faith, in the very pres­ence of the heav­enly Fa­ther. And this tri­umphant faith was a liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence of ac­tual spirit at­tain­ment. Je­sus’ great con­tri­bu­tion to the val­ues of hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence was not that he re­vealed so many new ideas about the Fa­ther in heaven, but rather that he so mag­nif­i­cently and hu­manly demon­strated a new and higher type of liv­ing faith in God. Never on all the worlds of this uni­verse, in the life of any one mor­tal, did God ever be­come such a liv­ing re­al­ity as in the hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth.

196:0.4In the Mas­ter’s life on Uran­tia, this and all other worlds of the lo­cal cre­ation dis­cover a new and higher type of re­li­gion, re­li­gion based on per­sonal spir­i­tual re­la­tions with the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther and wholly val­i­dated by the su­preme au­thor­ity of gen­uine per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence. This liv­ing faith of Je­sus was more than an in­tel­lec­tual re­flec­tion, and it was not a mys­tic med­i­ta­tion.

• effect of faith › destroys uncertainty, conflicting desires
• Jesus’ faith › Jesus’ faith was personal, living, original, spontaneous, and purely spiritual

196:0.5The­ol­ogy may fix, for­mu­late, de­fine, and dog­ma­tize faith, but in the hu­man life of Je­sus faith was per­sonal, liv­ing, orig­i­nal, spon­ta­neous, and purely spir­i­tual. This faith was not rev­er­ence for tra­di­tion nor a mere in­tel­lec­tual be­lief which he held as a sa­cred creed, but rather a sub­lime ex­pe­ri­ence and a pro­found con­vic­tion which se­curely held him. His faith was so real and all-en­com­pass­ing that it ab­so­lutely swept away any spir­i­tual doubts and ef­fec­tively de­stroyed ev­ery con­flict­ing de­sire. Noth­ing was able to tear him away from the spir­i­tual an­chor­age of this fer­vent, sub­lime, and un­daunted faith. Even in the face of ap­par­ent de­feat or in the throes of dis­ap­point­ment and threat­en­ing de­spair, he calmly stood in the di­vine pres­ence free from fear and fully con­scious of spir­i­tual in­vin­ci­bil­ity. Je­sus en­joyed the in­vig­o­rat­ing as­sur­ance of the pos­ses­sion of un­flinch­ing faith, and in each of life’s try­ing sit­u­a­tions he un­fail­ingly ex­hib­ited an un­ques­tion­ing loy­alty to the Fa­ther’s will. And this su­perb faith was un­daunted even by the cruel and crush­ing threat of an ig­no­min­ious death.

• defined as › unconscious spontaneous expression of experience with God

196:0.6In a re­li­gious ge­nius, strong spir­i­tual faith so many times leads di­rectly to dis­as­trous fa­nati­cism, to ex­ag­ger­a­tion of the re­li­gious ego, but it was not so with Je­sus. He was not un­fa­vor­ably af­fected in his prac­ti­cal life by his ex­traor­di­nary faith and spirit at­tain­ment be­cause this spir­i­tual ex­al­ta­tion was a wholly un­con­scious and spon­ta­neous soul ex­pres­sion of his per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence with God.

• have faith in › certainty and security of Father’s guidance and protection

196:0.9The Mas­ter’s en­tire life was con­sis­tently con­di­tioned by this liv­ing faith, this sub­lime re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. This spir­i­tual at­ti­tude wholly dom­i­nated his think­ing and feel­ing, his be­liev­ing and pray­ing, his teach­ing and preach­ing. This per­sonal faith of a son in the cer­tainty and se­cu­rity of the guid­ance and pro­tec­tion of the heav­enly Fa­ther im­parted to his unique life a pro­found en­dow­ment of spir­i­tual re­al­ity. And yet, de­spite this very deep con­scious­ness of close re­la­tion­ship with di­vin­ity, this Galilean, God’s Galilean, when ad­dressed as Good Teacher, in­stantly replied, “Why do you call me good?” When we stand con­fronted by such splen­did self-for­get­ful­ness, we be­gin to un­der­stand how the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther found it pos­si­ble so fully to man­i­fest him­self to him and re­veal him­self through him to the mor­tals of the realms.

• have faith in › fundamental goodness of universe
• simple childlike f. is only requisite to enter kingdom

196:0.11In the earthly life of Je­sus, re­li­gion was a liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence, a di­rect and per­sonal move­ment from spir­i­tual rev­er­ence to prac­ti­cal righ­teous­ness. The faith of Je­sus bore the tran­scen­dent fruits of the di­vine spirit. His faith was not im­ma­ture and cred­u­lous like that of a child, but in many ways it did re­sem­ble the un­sus­pect­ing trust of the child mind. Je­sus trusted God much as the child trusts a par­ent. He had a pro­found con­fi­dence in the uni­verse—just such a trust as the child has in its pa­ren­tal en­vi­ron­ment. Je­sus’ whole­hearted faith in the fun­da­men­tal good­ness of the uni­verse very much re­sem­bled the child’s trust in the se­cu­rity of its earthly sur­round­ings. He de­pended on the heav­enly Fa­ther as a child leans upon its earthly par­ent, and his fer­vent faith never for one mo­ment doubted the cer­tainty of the heav­enly Fa­ther’s over­care. He was not dis­turbed se­ri­ously by fears, doubts, and skep­ti­cism. Un­be­lief did not in­hibit the free and orig­i­nal ex­pres­sion of his life. He com­bined the stal­wart and in­tel­li­gent cour­age of a full-grown man with the sin­cere and trust­ing op­ti­mism of a be­liev­ing child. His faith grew to such heights of trust that it was de­void of fear.

• defined as › dependence on God which yields assurance
• warnings regarding faith › should be childlike, not childish

196:0.12The faith of Je­sus at­tained the pu­rity of a child’s trust. His faith was so ab­so­lute and un­doubt­ing that it re­sponded to the charm of the con­tact of fel­low be­ings and to the won­ders of the uni­verse. His sense of de­pen­dence on the di­vine was so com­plete and so con­fi­dent that it yielded the joy and the as­sur­ance of ab­so­lute per­sonal se­cu­rity. There was no hes­i­tat­ing pre­tense in his re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. In this gi­ant in­tel­lect of the full-grown man the faith of the child reigned su­preme in all mat­ters re­lat­ing to the re­li­gious con­scious­ness. It is not strange that he once said, “Ex­cept you be­come as a lit­tle child, you shall not en­ter the king­dom.” Not­with­stand­ing that Je­sus’ faith was child­like, it was in no sense child­ish.

• defined as › wholehearted consecration

196:1.1Je­sus’ de­vo­tion to the Fa­ther’s will and the ser­vice of man was even more than mor­tal de­ci­sion and hu­man de­ter­mi­na­tion; it was a whole­hearted con­se­cra­tion of him­self to such an un­re­served be­stowal of love. No mat­ter how great the fact of the sov­er­eignty of Mi­chael, you must not take the hu­man Je­sus away from men. The Mas­ter has as­cended on high as a man, as well as God; he be­longs to men; men be­long to him. How un­for­tu­nate that re­li­gion it­self should be so mis­in­ter­preted as to take the hu­man Je­sus away from strug­gling mor­tals! Let not the dis­cus­sions of the hu­man­ity or the di­vin­ity of the Christ ob­scure the sav­ing truth that Je­sus of Naz­a­reth was a re­li­gious man who, by faith, achieved the know­ing and the do­ing of the will of God; he was the most truly re­li­gious man who has ever lived on Uran­tia.

• Jesus’ faith › Jesus has faith in us

196:1.5It should not be the aim of king­dom be­liev­ers lit­er­ally to im­i­tate the out­ward life of Je­sus in the flesh but rather to share his faith; to trust God as he trusted God and to be­lieve in men as he be­lieved in men. Je­sus never ar­gued about ei­ther the fa­ther­hood of God or the broth­er­hood of men; he was a liv­ing il­lus­tra­tion of the one and a pro­found dem­on­stra­tion of the other.

• Jesus’ faith › Jesus has faith in us

196:2.10He taught men to place a high value upon them­selves in time and in eter­nity. Be­cause of this high es­ti­mate which Je­sus placed upon men, he was will­ing to spend him­self in the un­remit­ting ser­vice of hu­mankind. And it was this in­fi­nite worth of the fi­nite that made the golden rule a vi­tal fac­tor in his re­li­gion. What mor­tal can fail to be up­lifted by the ex­traor­di­nary faith Je­sus has in him?

• defined as › positive leading of indwelling divine presence

196:3.1Per­sonal, spir­i­tual re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence is an ef­fi­cient sol­vent for most mor­tal dif­fi­cul­ties; it is an ef­fec­tive sorter, eval­u­a­tor, and ad­juster of all hu­man prob­lems. Re­li­gion does not re­move or de­stroy hu­man trou­bles, but it does dis­solve, ab­sorb, il­lu­mi­nate, and tran­scend them. True re­li­gion uni­fies the per­son­al­ity for ef­fec­tive ad­just­ment to all mor­tal re­quire­ments. Re­li­gious faith—the pos­i­tive lead­ing of the in­dwelling di­vine pres­ence—un­fail­ingly en­ables the God-know­ing man to bridge that gulf ex­ist­ing be­tween the in­tel­lec­tual logic which rec­og­nizes the Uni­ver­sal First Cause as It and those pos­i­tive af­fir­ma­tions of the soul which aver this First Cause is He, the heav­enly Fa­ther of Je­sus’ gospel, the per­sonal God of hu­man sal­va­tion.