"For I was. . . naked, and ye clothed me; I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me." Matt. 25: 35, 36.
These words have always elicited our admiration, and many have tried to do these works, but the attempt to apply them literally makes it impossible for many to do them. In Christian Science we learn that the sense of "nakedness" is when we see the nothingness of mortal thought. We fail to find certainty anywhere in mortal thought. Everything seems based on "shifting sand." We find no true logic, no true intelligence, no true wisdom, no true love therein. "The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint," and we say, "Which way shall we turn? Where look for truth or happiness, or comfort? We would escape from all this uncertainty, but how can we do so?" Then Christian Science comes to us and clothes us with the Truth as revealed to this age through our text-book. It tells us that God— Good — is the only Intelligence, and man is His image and likeness; that we in our true Being reflect this Intelligence, and as we come more and more into the understanding of our relation to our Father-Mother, God, we feel that we are "clothed and in our right mind."
"Sick and ye visited me." How we have tried to "do likewise" in this respect! We have visited the sick, have sympathized with them, have watched with them night and day, — and yet were powerless to relieve their sufferings. How our hearts have ached, and we have longed to help them! How thankful, how grateful we should be that we have to-day the "Word" which tells us how to "visit" them; how to sympathize with them, not by making a reality of their ailments, but by knowing its nothingness, knowing that God never made sickness, or any law by which sickness could be produced, and that it has no real existence; by knowing that it is only the false, material senses that tell us of disease, of discord and inharmony, and that these senses have never told the truth, and this claim of sickness would defraud its victim of his "inalienable right." S.&.H.,286—6. By this understanding we are able to "visit the sick" in the true way, by helping them to overcome the sense of sickness and by pointing out to them its cause, —viz., the belief in a power apart from God, and then helping them to see their way out of this by placing in their hands the "Word" which will make them "wise unto salvation."
