All who subscribe to the tenets of The Mother Church make the following acknowledgment: "We acknowledge Jesus' atonement as the evidence of divine, efficacious Love, unfolding man's unity with God through Christ Jesus the Wayshower" (Science and Health, p. 497).
The word Wayshower implies a knowledge of the way. We wish to emphasize the definite article "the," for as here used it signifies that there is only one way. In the fourteenth chapter of John, Jesus speaks of himself thus: "I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man Cometh unto the Father, but by me." The fact that Jesus was the way embraces the connate fact that he was the Wayshower. Had he not been the way he could not have been the Wayshower, for he must have known the way before he could show it to others. He did know the way, and therefore he was not a speculative nor a theoretical but a practical Wayshower.
It was this knowledge, no doubt, which enabled Jesus to make the startling declaration above quoted: "No man cometh unto the Father, but by me." Had he been less than the way he could not truthfully have made such a statement. One not sent of God, or divinely authorized, who should make so astonishing an assertion of power, might justly be regarded as an impostor, and had not Jesus been able to prove his words by his deeds he might have been so regarded. In claiming that no one could come to the Father but by him, he was taking upon himself an exclusive prerogative. It is not strange, then, that he pronounced all who had gone before him to have been thieves and robbers. A tremendous assumption; yet before he left the world he proved the truth of it, and hence his right to say it.
In view of the peculiar place which Jesus occupied in his relation to the Father and to mankind, we can readily see the wisdom of our latter-day wayshower, Mrs. Eddy, in enjoining her followers to pursue the course of study set forth on page 214 of "Miscellaneous Writings," namely, "My students need to search the Scriptures and 'Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,' to understand the personal Jesus' labor in the flesh for their salvation: they need to do this even to understand my works, their motives, aims, and tendency."
A careful study of these words of vital import should be made by every one who truly desires to follow both Jesus and the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science. Mrs. Eddy was too great a Leader and too busy a person to make idle statements. Her sayings are filled with deep meaning, and this depth of meaning comes home to each individual follower. Therefore each individual follower, as a matter of self-help if for no other reason, should study and apply her teachings to himself. She was an earnest follower of the great Wayshower; hence her teaching is a reflex of his teaching, as she so uniformly claims. In following her inspired interpretation, therefore, we become students of his teaching.
In analyzing Mrs. Eddy's admonition as above quoted, then, let us carefully note that we are to search (study) both the Scriptures and our text-book. We are to make them one in the spiritual sense. We are to study them in their relation to "the personal Jesus' labor in the flesh" for our salvation from error of every sort, also in order to understand our Leader's works, "their motives, aims, and tendency."
This embraces much, and any partial failure thus to study and understand prevents in that degree our redemption from the claims of matter, disease, and death. Shall we neglect so great salvation? To the extent that we do so we are ignoring one of the essential tenets of our church and falling short of our duty as professed adherents of Truth. If we are not obedient to the fundamentals of our teaching we surely cannot expect the results which follow such obedience. If we have not taken the first footstep, we flatter ourselves amiss if we fancy that we have taken the last footstep and have already attained. Sooner or later we shall suffer the penalty of our blindness and self-mesmerism if we think we have come to understand the universal or impersonal Christ, Truth, before we have even acquired a fair and practical knowledge of the personal Christ Jesus in his relation to God and humanity.
We should not overlook but implicitly regard that other wise admonition of our Leader on page 215 of "Miscellaneous Writings": "My students are at the beginning of their demonstration; they have a long warfare with error in themselves and in others to finish, and they must at this stage use the sword of Spirit. They cannot in the beginning take the attitude, nor adopt the words, that Jesus used at the end of his demonstration."
Shall any single one of us flatter himself that he has outgrown the necessity for still following this behest of our Leader? We should wait until the real testing time has come; wait until we have been tried as it were by fire and withstood the trial, before we undertake to answer that we feel sure we have gone beyond the need of studying how to follow the personal wayshower; wait until we have more nearly reached the point where we can truly say we have in us that same Mind "which was also in Christ Jesus" before we attempt to sail away on golden fleeced clouds to the infinite and universal Christ, Truth, disdaining to look longer upon the Sodom and Gomorrah of material sense. When we shall have divested ourselves of all taint of this Sodom and Gomorrah, then and not before can we see and know the universal, eternal Christ.
A study of all that our Leader says in the text-book and her other writings under the head of Wayshower, which can readily be found in the concordances, will throw a flood of light, over the subject we are considering. Such a study gives clearer views of Jesus as the human guide and Christ as the divine Leader. Doing this in the right way, we shall be able to say with Mrs. Eddy on page 349 of Miscellany: "Thus the great Wayshower, invested with glory, is understood, and his words and works illustrate 'the way, the truth, and the life.'"
