When speaking of his mission, Christ Jesus said, "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil." His words clearly indicate that he discerned in the hearts and minds of mankind a great lack, and that the most pressing need was one of fulfillment of God's beneficent law, rather than of condemnation. In obedience to true law he saw liberty for the individual and the community, and in the prophets he saw a revelation of God's unfailing promise of peace to all who should seek and find Him as Father. To show mankind how to demonstrate unity with God, he devoted his brief but glorious career. What a mission of love was his; and how fraught with blessings for all!
This declaration of Jesus, with kindred others, awakened and arrested the attention of those who came within his influence. The sin-sick and world-weary looked up,— filled with spiritual grace,—and were vouchsafed a vision of boundless possibility. On the other hand,the hypocritical carnal mind, tyrannical and self-satisfied, regarded this advent of freedom with consternation and hate, crying out, "Let us alone; what have we to do with thee. thou Jesus of Nazareth? art thou come to destroy us?" In such a mistaken attitude toward Christ Jesus lay the reason for mankind's slavery; and his spirituality had caused it to be self-confessed.
Within the so-called carnal mind there claims to exist all that would defy and deny the omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience of the one God in quality and quantity, in origin, substance, law, power, cause, and effect. This evil influence must be removed, and mankind's belief in it and fear of it be proved groundless, before sick and sinning humanity can look up with hope of freedom from the results of carnal belief, faithlessness, fear, discord, lust, poverty, sorrow, sickness, and other forms of human bondage.
