Do Christian Scientists believe in Jesus Christ, or his divinity? This is a question often asked. In the trial of the Buswell case reported in our last issue, the prosecuting attorney asked Mr. Buswell the question: "I will ask you if you believe in the divinity of Christ?" At Mr. Buswel's reply: "I certainly do," he seemed surprised, and in his surprise ejaculated: "You believe in his divinity?" To which came the unqualified answer, Yes sir."
This is the unqualified answer of every true Christian Scientist to all such questions. We might go further and remark, that all true Christian Scientists will say, that they never truly believed in the divinity of Jesus Christ until they became Christian Scientists, for the reason that they did not know how to so believe. They could not, from the interpretations to which they had been formerly used, understand how he could be both divine and human. They had no clear understanding of the immaculacy of his conception. They had been taught to and did accept it as a profound mystery, which was not to be understood. They never understood, in the old way, what the terms "Jesus the Christ" meant. They did not suppose that there was any distinction between "Jesus" and "the Christ." They confounded the man, or human Jesus, with the Christ. They were not aware that Jesus the man was the mortal, and therefore, the dying, while the Christ was the immortal and therefore the undying. They did not understand that Jesus was not God, but that he was "God manifest in the flesh." They did not understand that Jesus referred to the Christ when he said that after his departure,— that is, after the personality of the human Jesus was withdrawn,— he would send them another Comforter, the "spirit of Truth." The personal Jesus testified of the eternal Christ when he assured his hearers that not he, the personal or fleshly Jesus, but the Christ who was the Spirit of Truth and Comforter, should be with them "alway, even to the end of the world." They have learned that the personality who appeared to human sense as the man Jesus, was the temporal, or human side, and not the eternal or Christ side that only in so far as the personality of Jesus manifested or reflected the divine character of the Father, did he partake of the nature of the Christ, and in that sense he left behind him when he withdrew his personality, such a means of understanding the Father as, properly lived, would lead them into all Truth,"— that is, to an understanding of the Father. All this, and much more, pertaining to Jesus the Christ, have they learned as the result of their investigation and understanding of Christian Science. It can only be hinted at here. It is abundantly and systematically set forth in the text-book of Christian Science, Science and Health, by the Rev. Mary B. G. Eddy. A fair understanding of the teachings of this book, clears up all these vexed questions, and unfolds the Scriptures so satisfactorily and rationally that they become a new, and truly inspired book to the student.
We can only here repeat, that Christian Scientists do most absolutely, and in the broadest possible sense, believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ. They believe him to be one with the Father as he declared himself to be. They believe him to be the Way-shower, the Mediator, the only "name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved."
