Nothing happens by chance in the universe. Everything is in accord with law. Faith is a law, and acts as such. The law of faith is a law of belief—a belief so complete that the mind no longer rejects it. This belief must be subjective as well as objective. It must penetrate our inner consciousness.

The practitioner has a complete conviction that a higher use of the Law of cause and effect transcends a lower use of it. Even though he starts with only an intellectual or logical conviction of this, a spiritual intuition within him will support this logic and give him a consciousness of its reality. This will lift his faith to a place of complete certainty. Spiritual consciousness should be added to mental technique. Mental technique is the use we make of this consciousness.

The practitioner must know that conditions flow from causes and not the reverse, that everything in the physical world is an effect which must have a mental and spiritual cause back of it. He changes the cause and the Law changes the fact. It is only where there is a realization of the supremacy of spiritual thought force over what seems to resist it that there is any power in a treatment.

It might be asked if this is different from faith. Only in the sense that it is faith used as understanding, faith consciously applied for definite purposes, faith definitely directed to specific ends. When Jesus multiplied the loaves and fishes he was not turning water into wine; he was not finding money in the fish’s mouth or healing the blind man. He was multiplying loaves and fishes. He was using his spiritual awareness for the definite purpose of feeding the multitude. He multiplied the idea in his own consciousness, gave thanks, and with sublime indifference told them to distribute the result among the multitude.

This was, indeed, an act of unconditioned faith, but it was a definite faith. He was doing a specific thing. Jesus was definite in his use of spiritual power. When he told the blind man to see he was using his consciousness of spiritual vision for the purpose of changing blindness into sight. The blindness was an objective condition which he ignored. His mental and spiritual equivalent of seeing was greater than the man’s mental equivalent of not being able to see, therefore, it transcended it and immediately the man’s eyes were opened.

One who studies the acts of faith through the ages discovers that effective faith has always been applied to specific purposes when definite results have followed. There is an authentic story of a man who prayed for God to lift a fog. He was entering a harbor and the captain of his boat refused to dock in the fog. This man of great spiritual faith took the captain into his cabin and prayed with him that the fog might be lifted. When they went on deck it had cleared away. This man was a good, oldfashioned, orthodox preacher, but he was complying with the law of faith. He was seeing through the fog to the light.

A practitioner of spiritual mind healing is continually confronted with the fog of fear, superstition and doubt; otherwise, there would be no occasion for his practice. He will either get lost in the fog, or see through it. Though the fog is there, the sun is always shining—this is what he clings to. He declares that the sun is shining and that the fog is dissipated. This is his act of faith, his compliance with the Law, his surrender of appearances to a greater certainty in his own consciousness.

Because this is so, the spiritual mind practitioner must spend much time alone in quiet meditation until Spirit becomes as real to him as form. Spiritual mind practice does not call for great concentration, but for deep realization and conviction.

If this deep conviction were something we had to implant in our minds we should be lost in a sea of speculative philosophy. The wonderful thing about this is that the deep conviction is already there when we clear away the confusion. If one had to put life into life he couldn’t do it, he would be lost. But if life is already at the center of everything, one can recognize it. This is what spiritual mind practice is. It is the recognition of a deep and abiding harmony at the center of everything. •

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