pain, death,--a false sense of life and happiness. Mortals, if at ease in
so-called existence, are in their native element of error, and must become
_dis-eased_, dis-quieted, before error is annihilated.
Jesus walked with bleeding feet the thorny earth-road, treading "the
winepress alone." His persecutors said mockingly, "Save thyself, and come
down from the cross." This was the very thing he _was_ doing, coming down
from the cross, saving himself after the manner that he had taught, by the
law of Spirit's supremacy; and this was done through what is humanly called
_agony_.
Even the ice-bound hypocrite melts in fervent heat, before he apprehends
Christ as "the way." The Master's sublime triumph over all mortal mentality
was immortality's goal. He was too wise not to be willing to test the full
compass of human woe, being "in all points tempted like as we are, yet
without sin."
Thus the absolute unreality of sin, sickness, and death was revealed,--a
revelation that beams on mortal sense as the midnight sun shines over the
Polar Sea.
The Saviour's Mission
If there is no reality in evil, why did the Messiah come to the world, and
from what evils was it his purpose to save humankind? How, indeed, is he a
Saviour, if the evils from which he saves are nonentities?
Jesus came to earth; but the Christ (that is, the divine idea of the divine
Principle which made heaven and earth) was never absent from the earth and
heaven; hence the phraseology of Jesus, who spoke of the Christ as one who
came down from heaven, yet as "the Son of man _which is in heaven_." (John
iii. 13.) By this we understand Christ to be the divine idea brought to the
flesh in the son of Mary.
Salvation is as eternal as God. To mortal thought Jesus appeared as a
child, and grew to manhood, to suffer before Pilate and on Calvary, because
he could reach and teach mankind only through this conformity to mortal
conditions; but Soul never saw the Saviour come and go, because the divine
idea is always present.
Jesus came to rescue men from these very illusions to which he seemed to
conform: from the illusion which calls sin real, and man a sinner, needing
a Saviour; the illusion which calls sickness real, and man an invalid,
needing a physician; the illusion that death is as real as Life. From such
thoughts--mortal inventions, one and all--Christ Jesus came to save men,
through ever-present and eternal good.
Mortal man is a kingdom divided against itself. With the same breath he
articulates truth and error. We say that God is All, and there is none
beside Him, and then talk of sin and sinners as real. We call God
omnipotent and omnipresent, and then conjure up, from the dark abyss of
nothingness, a powerful presence named _evil_. We say that harmony is real,
and inharmony is its opposite, and therefore unreal; yet we descant upon
sickness, sin, and death as realities.
With the tongue "bless we God, even the Father; and therewith curse we men,
who are made after the similitude [human concept] of God. Out of the same
mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not
so to be." (James iii. 9, 10.) Mortals are free moral agents, to choose
whom they would serve. If God, then let them serve Him, and He will be unto
them All-in-all.
If God is ever present, He is neither absent from Himself nor from the
universe. Without Him, the universe would disappear, and space, substance,
and immortality be lost. St. Paul says, "And if Christ be not raised, your
faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins." (1 Corinthians xv. 17.) Christ
cannot come to mortal and material sense, which sees not God. This false
sense of substance must yield to His eternal presence, and so dissolve.
Rising above the false, to the true evidence of Life, is the resurrection
that takes hold of eternal Truth. Coming and going belong to mortal
consciousness. God is "the same yesterday, and to-day, and forever."
To material sense, Jesus first appeared as a helpless human babe; but to
immortal and spiritual vision he was one with the Father, even the eternal
idea of God, that was--and is--neither young nor old, neither dead nor
risen. The mutations of mortal sense are the evening and the morning of
human thought,--the twilight and dawn of earthly vision, which precedeth
the nightless radiance of divine Life. Human perception, advancing toward
the apprehension of its nothingness, halts, retreats, and again goes
forward; but the divine Principle and Spirit and spiritual man are
unchangeable,--neither advancing, retreating, nor halting.
Our highest sense of infinite good in this mortal sphere is but the sign
and symbol, not the substance of good. Only faith and a feeble
understanding make the earthly acme of human sense. "The life which I now
live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God." (Galatians ii.
20.)
Christian Science is both demonstration and fruition, but how attenuated
are our demonstration and realization of this Science! Truth, in divine
Science, is the stepping-stone to the understanding of God; but the broken
and contrite heart soonest discerns this truth, even as the helpless sick
are soonest healed by it. Invalids say, "I have recovered from sickness;"
when the fact really remains, in divine Science, that they never were sick.
The Christian saith, "Christ (God) died for me, and came to save me;" yet
God dies not, and is the ever-presence that neither comes nor goes, and man
is forever His image and likeness. "The things which are seen are temporal;
but the things which are not seen are eternal." (2 Corinthians iv. 18.)
This is the mystery of godliness--that God, good, is never absent, and
there is none beside good. Mortals can understand this only as they reach
the Life of good, and learn that there is no Life in evil. Then shall it
appear that the true ideal of omnipotent and ever-present good is an ideal
wherein and wherefor there is no evil. Sin exists only as a sense, and not
as Soul. Destroy this sense of sin, and sin disappears. Sickness, sin, or
death is a false sense of Life and good. Destroy this trinity of error, and
you find Truth.
In Science, Christ never died. In material sense Jesus died, and lived. The
fleshly Jesus seemed to die, though he did not. The Truth or Life in divine
Science--undisturbed by human error, sin, and death--saith forever, "I am
the living God, and man is My idea, never in matter, nor resurrected from
it." "Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen."
(Luke xxiv. 5, 6.) Mortal sense, confining itself to matter, is all that
can be buried or resurrected.
Mary had risen to discern faintly God's ever-presence, and that of His
idea, man; but her mortal sense, reversing Science and spiritual
understanding, interpreted this appearing as a risen Christ. The I
AM was neither buried nor resurrected. The Way, the Truth, and the
Life were never absent for a moment. This trinity of Love lives and reigns
forever. Its kingdom, not apparent to material sense, never disappeared to
spiritual sense, but remained forever in the Science of being. The
so-called appearing, disappearing, and reappearing of ever-presence, in
whom is no variableness or shadow of turning, is the false human sense of
that light which shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it
not.
Summary
All that _is_, God created. If sin has any pretense of existence, God is
responsible therefor; but there is no reality in sin, for God can no more
behold it, or acknowledge it, than the sun can coexist with darkness.
To build the individual spiritual sense, conscious of only health,
holiness, and heaven, on the foundations of an eternal Mind which is
conscious of sickness, sin, and death, is a moral impossibility; for "other
foundation can no man lay than that is laid." (1 Corinthians iii. 11.) The
nearer we approximate to such a Mind, even if it were (or could be) God,
the more real those mind-pictures would become to us; until the hope of
ever eluding their dread presence must yield to despair, and the haunting
sense of evil forever accompany our being.
Mortals may climb the smooth glaciers, leap the dark fissures, scale the
treacherous ice, and stand on the summit of Mont Blanc; but they can never
turn back what Deity knoweth, nor escape from identification with what
dwelleth in the eternal Mind.