Skeptics may perhaps be pardoned for a confessed inability to reconcile the claim that the way of salvation is so plain that "wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein" with the fact that Christendom is divided into some one hundred and fifty different sects, each professing to find its credentials in the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. Can it be that the essential truths of Christianity were originally voiced in such ambiguous terms as to render their meaning unintelligible to subsequent generations, or is something radically wrong with the way men have undertaken to interpret the Scriptures? The chief difficulty would seem to be that, although punctilious in their efforts to comprehend the letter of the Word, Biblical students have failed to grasp the spiritual point of view which is the key to the inspired utterances. Then again, the partiality of the oriental type of mind for metaphorical forms of expression, together with the absence of a definite and complete system of terminology suited to convey metaphysical meanings, constrained the apostolic writers to use material and inexact figures of speech in dealing with the exact Science of Christianity. And last but not least in the line of obstacles has been the handicap imposed by faulty and inadequate renderings of the available texts, due to theological bias and lack of spiritual understanding on the part of the authorized translators. Little wonder on the whole that the phraseology of the English version abounds in paradoxical and seemingly irreconcilable statements.
This apparent discrepancy is illustrated in the recorded sayings of Jesus anent the question of judging. For example, he is quoted by John as having said, "If any man hear my words, and believe not, I judge him not: for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world;" while on another occasion he declared, "As I hear, I judge: and my judgment is just." Taking the words literally, it looks as if the great Preceptor were guilty of violating his own injunction, "Judge not," in the Sermon on the Mount, when in almost the next sentence he characterized the devotee of a formal, proscriptive type of religion with the epithet, "Thou hypocrite," a term which occurs frequently in his discourses; from all of which it would appear that it was not the act of judging which he denounced, but judging from the erratic standpoint of personal sense, drawing conclusions from mistaken premises.
According to the author of the epistle to the Hebrews, "The word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." That the writer of this passage understood the scientific distinction between so-called mortal man, man as he is conceived to exist from the fleshly standpoint, and spiritual man, the incorporeal likeness of divine Mind, is evident from the Greek text, in which the words rendered respectively "soul" and "spirit" present a contrast which unfortunately is not brought out in the translation. Indeed, the uniformity and consistency with which these two terms are used throughout the Greek version of the New Testament to differentiate between material, misnamed life, the ephemeral, delusive concept of existence as personal and mortal, and spiritual life, the pure, constant reflection of Spirit which constitutes genuine man, such careful discrimination on the part of the earlier writers would of itself be strong evidence that the Master especially emphasized this point in his instructions to his students. Failure, moreover, to maintain this scientific distinction, a distinction which enabled the early disciples to divest human consciousness of false beliefs and bring into manifestation the realities of being, deprived the Christian religion of its pristine spiritual unction for centuries until the rediscovery in Christian Science of the divine Logos, "the word of God," made possible a revival of the healing and regenerative work of the apostolic era.
