“Wherefore didst thou doubt?”

Doubt of spiritual truth is a denial of the allness and goodness of God and of His government as real. He who knows that God, good, governs, walks unharmed over the waves of mortal belief. He who doubts loses hold of divine Principle, and sinks in the waters of unbelief—the realm of the unreal. He who understands Christ, Truth, does not doubt; for he knows that material sense and all its claims are fictitious and powerless to harm. Doubt spells disintegration. Trust, confidence in good, spells victory. Hence, only ignorance doubts; the man of understanding is no doubter.

When Jesus walked on the water, as related in the fourteenth chapter of Matthew, he was acting in perfect accord with all that he had hitherto been saying and doing in Galilee and Judea. He had healed the centurion’s servant while absent from him, raised Jairus’ daughter when present with her, turned the water into wine, and fed five thousand with “five barley loaves, and two small fishes.” All this Jesus did through his understanding of the Science of being. He gave irrefutable proof that matter and evil are not a law or power, and that Spirit, God, is the only law and the only power.

After Jesus had fed the five thousand, he was so thronged, so pressed upon by personality and by human will-power on the part of the multitude, that he sent them away, directing his disciples to take a boat and sail to the other shore of the Sea of Galilee, while he went apart in prayer. John tells us of the import of that prayer, recounting that Jesus perceived that his followers “would come and take him by force, to make him a king.” So the Master “went up into a mountain apart to pray”—to realize the truth of being—and so win a victory over the mad ambition of his unwise friends, and prove that blind force and human will are not power, since God only is power. Alone with God, divine Mind, Jesus met and mastered the so-called force of animal magnetism and, as a result, the storm of opposition to the truth which he made manifest. In the silence and calm of thought anchored in divine Principle, he realized the allness of impregnable good, God, and the nothingness of a supposititious opposite.

In the consciousness of omnipotent and omnipresent Love Jesus went unto his disciples, who were distressed by the boisterousness of material sense testimony. To them, controlled by this false sense, the facts of being seemed reversed. To see Jesus walking on the sea, the master of material so-called law, was a cause for rejoicing; but the disciples, controlled by physical instead of spiritual sense, “cried out for fear.” Then the tender, patient captain of their salvation, governed only by spiritual sense, called them from the false to the true, saying, “Be of good cheer; it is I; be not afraid.” Thus spiritual sense reverses every false claim of error. It sees evil as unreal, powerless, nothing. It knows good, God, to be the only real, the only power, all that is. It calls to the sons of men, “Be of good cheer.” It understands that Truth is the only presence and the only cause; therefore it affirms, “Be not afraid.”

It was Peter, roused by the Master’s voice, who laid aside somewhat of his fear and said, “Lord, if it be thou, bid me come unto thee on the water.” Peter’s “bid me come” evidenced an awakening from the dream of material sense; but the little word “if” indicated that belief had not yet given way to full faith in Christ, Truth. Yet Jesus unhesitatingly and instantly said, “Come”! The feeblest appeal of faith to Christ, Truth, meets with instant encouragement. “When the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?” Here “the Son of man” came to Peter, and found such a measure of faith that Peter “walked on the water, to go to Jesus.”

There is no confusion in the record. Peter walked on the water just as Jesus walked on the water. His faith in Christ, Truth, had risen to a sufficient degree of spiritual understanding to enable him to express so much of dominion. This Galilean fisherman exemplified the words of his Master, “According to your faith be it unto you.” Simon Peter had been a disciple less than two years, yet his reliance on Christ, Truth, enabled him to walk on the water! It is not length of time, not scholarly equipment, not long experience, that makes demonstration possible,—but “accordingly to your faith be it unto you.”

So long as Peter kept his eyes fixed on the Christ, he was successful; but when he allowed fear to come between himself and Truth, he failed. “When he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid; and beginning to sink, he cried, saying, Lord, save me.” So long as Peter experienced no opposition to Truth, his simple faith was sufficient to give him dominion; but when material sense testified to a storm of opposition he began to sink.

In order to meet the antagonism stirred up by the presence of Truth, faith must find fruition in understanding. He who is to make progress in Truth must live his degree of understanding of the unreality of evil, and thus be able to prove its nothingness. Understanding sees Truth as All, and so sees nothing between Truth and Truth’s idea,—God’s perfect, spiritual man,—and forever realizes that the Lord saves; that is, understanding knows that God’s man is forever at-one with his Maker, safe from error and safe in Truth.

When, because of fear, Peter failed to do his own work aright, he wisely sought the helping hand of the one who understood better than he. Peter saw as real that which was unreal. He gave power to that which had no power. He was weighed down by his own fears and false beliefs; but he had implicit faith in the power of Jesus’ understanding to save, and he cried, “Lord, save me.” The help was instantaneous. Putting his complete reliance on Christ, Truth, his burden fell away. The record reads, “Immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand, and caught him.” However great the fear, however slight the understanding, however severe the problem, those who put their whole trust in Truth find, with David, that “the Lord shall help them, and deliver them: … and save them, because they trust in him.”

Peter, overcoming the fear which afflicted the other disciples with him in the ship, was the first to discern and trust Christ, Truth. He was the only one of Jesus’ followers of his time, or since, so far as is recorded, who walked on the water; yet Jesus rebuked him, “O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?” Why did Peter doubt? He had seen Jesus heal all manner of disease and raise the dead. In his name, Simon himself had cast out devils and healed the sick. Moreover, he beheld Jesus walking on the water and had the assurance from the Master that he himself could do likewise. He knew that Jesus never made a failure, and never commanded what could not be fulfilled. Then, wherefore the doubt?

A higher understanding awaited Peter, which removed doubt. After their beloved Master had left them, a new era dawned; and he had then more than a “little faith.” Peter instantly healed one crippled from birth. He said to Æneas, who had been bedridden for eight years, “Jesus Christ maketh thee whole: arise, and make thy bed. And he arose immediately.” He restored Dorcas to life. When in prison, with the death sentence impending, the prison doors were opened through the prayer of faith, and he walked forth free. He met the billows of so-called mortal mind unafraid. We know what freed Peter of fear and took from him all doubt. On the day of Pentecost, when the disciples “were all with one accord in one place,” the Master’s promise, given shortly before the ascension, was realized, and “they were all filled with the Holy Ghost.” They were endued with spiritual understanding. They more than believed. In some degree they understood the divine Principle of the one Mind underlying Science. Hence our beloved Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, says in “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures” (p. 483), “To those natural Christian Scientists, the ancient worthies, and to Christ Jesus, God certainly revealed the spirit of Christian Science, if not the absolute letter.”

The record of earnest Christian Scientists often repeats the experience of Peter. In darkness and doubt, amidst the raging billows of mortal mind, at the appearance of Christ, Truth, they cry out for fear. When reassured by the voice of Truth, “Be of good cheer; it is I; be not afraid,” they have believed in the person but have not understood the divine Principle of Christ Jesus. Often they have not found belief sufficient to meet the storm of willful opposition, and have merited the rebuke, “O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?” Then, rising superior to tribulation and doubt, with an awakened sense of God’s power and goodness, they have their vision of spiritual understanding. Thus imbued with the new understanding of divine Science, fears are largely absent, doubts are well-nigh gone, and they know whom they have believed. They have seen, heard, obeyed, and followed the call of the Christ; and they have exclaimed, as did the disciples of Christ Jesus, “Of a truth thou art the Son of God.”

They who discern Christ as the Son of God, they who know that Christian Science is the truth revealed and demonstrated by Jesus and discern and love the revelator of Truth to this age, are in some degree freed from fear and doubt. These true Christian Scientists, who have some glimpse of the Pentecostal day, say to others who are either overpowered by the magnitude of the demands of Spirit or overwhelmed by the billows of error, “Be of good cheer. … Wherefore didst thou doubt?”