When Jesus knew that the time was at hand for him to take the progressive step which would, according to the evidence of the material senses, separate him from his disciples, he began to prepare them for the change. By the study of John's Gospel, especially of the fourteenth to the seventeenth chapter inclusive, we come to realize something of Jesus' purpose to impress them with the truth that the real individual spiritual man cannot die or be separated from his Father, God. He prayed earnestly to have his students comprehend this indestructible relation, this scientific unity which exists between eternal Life and God's reflection, man. Furthermore, Jesus promised these men who had left all and followed him, and who were soon to be without his personal guidance, that they were still to have the consciousness with them of the divine presence and power. This presence was to remind them of all that the Master had taught them; and Jesus named it the Holy Ghost, or the spirit of Truth.
Following her deep Scriptural research and consequent discovery of the great facts of being, it was revealed to Mrs. Eddy that the Comforter, the Holy Ghost, as referred to by Jesus, was identical with what she was led to name Christian Science or Divine Science. She saw, too, that what took place on the day of Pentecost, and what is sometimes alluded to as the descent of the Holy Ghost,, was not so much an immediate result of some specific divine volition or directing, as it was the culmination of the successive illuminating experiences through which the disciples had passed.
During Jesus' three years' ministry, his students had been present on many occasions when he had furnished proofs of the truths he taught of the allness of Spirit and the nothingness of matter, the omnipotence of divine Mind and the impotence of so-called mortal mind. Water had been changed into wine, the sick had been healed, devils had been cast out, the waves had been walked over, and the dead had been raised, all according to the theology taught by Jesus. Also, the disciples had, in their own practice, demonstrated the divine Principle taught and practiced by their great Teacher; and finally, and above all, they had witnessed his resurrection. After mortals believed they had crucified and buried Jesus, he appeared to his students, not once but many times. In Acts we read that "he shewed himself [to them] alive after his passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God."
