The public ministry of Jesus of Nazareth, our Wayshower, in its three years of experience with mortal man and mortal mind, seems to have touched and illumined every possible phase of human conduct. With the searchlight of scientific, unchanging Truth he dispelled whatever mist came between his disciples and the guiding star of divine Love, showing them how to do "Life's work aright" (Science and Health, p. 18); how to work out their own salvation; how to plant for an eternal harvest; but not to do their work for them. He came to show them how to work so as to produce the proper results; and in the short period of three years he led them "in paths of righteousness" through the entire wilderness of human error and mistaken ideas of God's perfect way. Our Leader in Christian Science has fittingly denominated Jesus of Nazareth the Wayshower, and there can be no better guide for the human race than his teaching.
On two separate days in the walks through Galilee, there occurred that which is full of significance to any one who is in earnest in his desire to do the things which are of God, and to avoid doing the things which occasion stumbling and defeat to himself, and which are an occasion of stumbling to his fellows in the warfare for higher ideals, nobler aspirations, greater and more uplifting demonstrations of the power of God in human experience. It is related that at the end of one of his many journeys Jesus entered his home in Capernaum, and turning to his disciples he asked them, "What was it that ye disputed among yourselves by the way? But they held their peace," and did not answer him. "for by the way they had disputed among themselves, who should be the greatest" among them. And he sat down and called the twelve, and saith unto them. "If any man desire to be first, the same shall be last of all, and servant of all."
The usual interpretation of this saying of the Master seems to be, "If any man desire to be first in honor let him show his worthiness by his humility, and let him become the servant, the water-carrier and helper of another," or "If any man would be first among you, that very selfishness makes him unfit to be anything but your servant."
