TO one whose attention has been drawn to the subject of healing, through the study of Christian Science, there is something both striking and suggestive in the position assigned to the sermon on the mount in the Gospel according to Matthew. It occupies three chapters, numbered five, six, and seven, and so finds its place between the fourth chapter and the eighth. That this is evidently designed designed is clearly seen. It must have been the set purpose of the writer to connect the teaching of Jesus with his healing work, for in the fourth chapter we have a summary of all that he did in the opening of his public ministry, as well as a record of the deep impression that it made. Again, in the eighth, immediately at the close of the great discourse, we are introduced to a fresh series of works of healing, crowding one upon another, not only filling up the mission of a busy day, but giving indication of the continuance of this particular line of ministration.
Thus teaching and healing go hand in hand in all the public ministry of the Messiah, and a strong impression is gained that this coordination of toil bears upon it the true Messianic mark, designed to indicate the presence of Christ through the ages. The conviction gathers force that if Christ Jesus were to appear among us, doing such works today, we should rally to his standard, and would be along with the first to bring our sick ones to him. What, then, shall be said of those of his followers who claim that the presence of Christ never has been withdrawn, but is still with men, as when the sick were healed on the shores of Galilee and the slopes of Olivet? Yet this is the claim of the Christian Scientist, all over the world today; a claim that is independent of the arrangement of chapters in the different versions of the Bible, and, what is of infinitely more importance, a claim vindicated by the healing works that accompany the teaching of the church to which he belongs as it seeks to fulfil its divinely appointed mission among men. Let us see how this claim is strengthened by reference to the evident intention of the Gospel writer.
The sermon on the mount contains the gist of the teaching of Christ. It is confessedly the highest standard of ethics the world has ever seen. Its appeal is to all that is noblest and best in the spiritual intelligence of man. So pure and exalted are its precepts, that good and wise men, as the world estimates them, have declared their immediate application to the affairs of the world to be a moral impossibility They may be all right for a kingdom of heaven somewhere and elsewhere, but they never were intended for the busy haunts of the level-headed sons of toil, nor for those engaged in the pursuits incidental to a commercial or political life. Even the typical evangelical, engaged busily in church work, intent on the salvation of souls, is content to leave the awarding of Christ's beatitudes to another and a fairer clime. Hut the evangelist who gave us the first Gospel is more concerned with the present interpretation of Christ's message to men. and the immediate fulfilment of his purposes. To this end he has connected the teaching of Christ with the incidents and events of his daily ministry. He has linked the highest ethical instruction with the common needs of men, and shown their mutual relationship. He has shown how Christ Jesus passed from healing to teaching, and from teaching back to healing, as the easiest transition imaginable and the most natural thing in all the world. He has given us in the first pages of the undying Evangel, the type and example of that true Christian ministry which is intended to distinguish the followers of Christ down through all the ages. In this connected narrative he has drawn for us the true portraiture of the contemporary of all the ages,—the Christ who draws men to Truth through works of healing which proclaim Immanuel, or "God with us."
