FROM what we are able to gather concerning the earlier life of Jesus of Nazareth, it is evident that his all-absorbing purpose was to know God, to realize in the fullest sense man's relationship to "the Father." By reason of his spiritual-mindedness he perceived that God is Spirit. He understood, moreover, that only spiritual effects could proceed from a spiritual cause, consequently the material cast or show which creation seemed to present to the senses under the distinction of physical laws, modes, processes, phenomena, was, indeed, but a deceptive impression to be accounted for not on the ground of divine authorship, but as a result of the attempt to apprehend spiritual effects in unspiritual ways.
"Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God," are the words of one who drew his inspiration from profound experience. His pure consciousness caught the reflection of the divine nature as the objects overhead are mirrored in a pool of clear water. In the answering of the spiritual reflection to its original, Spirit, he discovered not alone what God is, but what man is as well. He saw that the creature of flesh and blood which had passed for man was not man at all, but a mere effigy or misrepresentation of man. It was because of his capacity to discriminate between the true and the false, the real and the unreal, the spiritual and the material, that Christ Jesus was able so to avail himself of divine power as to bring the real into manifestation and annul the claims of the unreal in experience. His innate consciousness of man's true being enabled him to heal disease by a method entirely different from any exploited by his contemporaries, and in such a manner as to confute his opponents.
The mental or psychic healers of his period, conjurors, exorcists, etc., assumed to cast out evil spirits and cure ills by power operating through the human will or fleshly mind. With all such methods he, however, took issue, declaring that the Father was the healer of disease as well as the creator and sustainer of man. He took the unique and startling position that the healing of sickness and the harmonizing of discordant conditions of every description, whether physical or moral, were to be effected merely by knowing the truth about God and His creation instead of resorting to materially conceived methods or trying to exert a personal influence of any sort over men and things. "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." "This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent."
