"Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake."—2 Cor. 12 : 10
The miracles recorded in the Scriptures illustrate the life of Jesus as nothing else can. We learn somewhat the qualities of the divine Mind through the human Jesus. The power of his transcendent goodness is manifest in the control it gave him over the opposite qualities of Spirit, named matter.
The Principle of these marvellous works is the divine Christ, but the actor was the human Jesus. This divine Principle is discerned in Christian Science, as we advance in the spiritual understanding that all Substance, Life and Intelligence are God. The so-called miracles contained in Holy Writ are neither supernatural nor preternatural, since their principle is God, good; and good is more natural with God than evil. The marvellous works of goodness are the outflowing of the Principle which constitutes the life of Christianity, and which dated the Christian era. It was the consummate naturalness of good in the mind of Jesus that made his healing easy and instantaneous. With Jesus, good was the normal state of man, and evil the abnormal : holiness, Life and health are better representatives of God than sickness, sin and death. Jesus of Nazareth, the great Master-Metaphysician, understood omnipotence; to him all power belongs to God, and because Spirit was all in all to him, matter was an error of premise and conclusion, and God the only Substance, Life and Intelligence of the man Jesus. The apostle Paul insists on the rare rule in Christian Science that we have chosen for a subject, a rule that is susceptible of proof, and applicable to every stage and state of human existence. The divine science of this rule is quite as remote from the general comprehension of this period as the so-called miracles of our blessed Master, and for the very reason that it is their basis. The foundation facts of Christian Science are gathered from the supremacy of spiritual law, and its antagonism to every supposed law material. Christians, to-day, should be able to say with the sweet serenity of the apostle, "I take pleasure in infirmities," I enjoy weakness, pain and every other suffering of the flesh, because they compel me to find happiness apart from a human sense of happiness. The holy calm of Paul's well tried hope met no obstacle or circumstance paramount to the triumph of a reasonable faith in the omnipotence of good as involved in its divine Principle, God. The so-called pains and pleasures of matter were alike unreal to him, for he regarded matter as a thing of mortal belief, and subdued it with this understanding.
