Page:The Origin of Christian Science.djvu/233

Rh hereafter, must grapple with and overcome the mortal belief in a power opposed to God.”

It is a pitiable salvation that one may merit by his works, that is by his intellectuality, the greatest amount of which any one unsanctified by grace possesses is small enough and gaseous enough to make him swell and burst with conceit. Salvation is not something we do for ourselves but something done for us and in us by the power of God. Jesus Christ knowing the dire need of human nature and the infinite grace of God that is able to redeem it and to restore it to its lost Eden, and knowing Buddha, Plato, Aristotle and all the rest of the world's intellectual giants, and towering above them as the oak of the forest above the hazel brush beneath it and in contrast with them, conditioned salvation on an act that is in psychic and ethical harmony with the grace and greatness of salvation, on an act that does not merit it but makes it possible, possible for all, for children and simple minded folk, for Abraham and all before as well as since Pentecost, namely—hear it all ye learned of the earth and come down from your pride of knowledge; hear it, all ye foolish ones and come up to your birthright. What is it? It is faith. That is the word of the soul's emancipation. It is a talismanic word. “This is the victory that overcometh world&emsp;*&emsp;*&emsp;*&emsp;our faith.” That word made Luther and every hero since Abel great; because it opens the heart to the