IN Matthew's Gospel we read that when Jesus told the disciples that "he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders, . . . and be killed, and be raised again the third day," Peter denied that such experiences should come to their beloved teacher, and expressed the desire that the Master might be far from those events which he foresaw as a necessary conclusion of his Messianic demonstration. Jesus rebuked Peter for so tempting him, following with words designed to make clear the necessity of laying down the human sense of life in order to manifest man's true self. "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me." Instruction could scarcely be plainer. Let him who would become Jesus' follower deny himself—that is, surrender his mortal sense of selfhood.
This seems a difficult passage to understand without the light of Christian Science, but in that light it is fully illumined. Denying one's self is, it is learned, nothing else than refuting the claims of the physical senses as to man's character and selfhood. Mortal mind, so called, affirms that man is material and mortal, a creature "of few days, and full of trouble." Christian Science, on the other hand, reveals man as spiritual, the image of God, who is infinite Spirit. "Life, God, omnipotent good, deny death, evil, sin, disease," writes Mrs. Eddy on page 113 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." Then as we gain some understanding of God's allness, of His omnipotence and of His omnipresence, we shall in that degree deny the claims of an opposite to reality. Living in the consciousness of man's perfection is the most effective denial of error's pretensions. Denial of the claims of material sense is a constant necessity if we would advance Spiritward. Not intermittently, but always, should the Christian Scientist abide in the sense that Spirit and its reflection is the only reality. Thus do we refute and destroy the insistent claims of matter which continually present themselves.
Our Leader's recognition of this necessity is notable in the first sentence of "the scientific statement of being," which, perhaps more definitely than any other statement from her pen, sets forth the fundamentals of Christian Science. "There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter" (Science and Health, p. 468) emphatically denies the common affirmation of mankind to the contrary—that man is material and mortal, a sentient being. Our Leader thus strikes at the heart of the problem by an unqualified denial of matter's claims, following immediately with a sentence which establishes the omnipresence of Spirit and of creation as spiritual.
