THE redemption of the world is considered the great mission of Christ Jesus; and yet, in spite of this common agreement by all professing Christians, how many have understood the far-reaching truths in the Master's life-work? The settled conviction, that much of what he taught was for that period of time only, has been like a dark blind shutting out the light of Truth which Jesus revealed, that the shades of limitation and misapprehension might be dispelled.
The belief that man, created in God's image and likeness, has fallen from his high estate, and that he can never hope to establish his God-given dominion until he has passed through the experience called death, is surely one of the most erroneous and cruel creeds that ever bound mankind. What a mockery it makes of the beloved disciple's statements that "God is love," and that "God is light, and in him is no darkness at all"!
Students of Christian Science can indeed utter the words of Jobwith confidence and rejoicing,"I know that my redeemer liveth." Through turning to God at the moment when she was apparently very near the dark valley, Mrs. Eddy was raised from a bed of sickness to perfect health; and this initiated her discovery of the divine Science which could enable all to obey the commands of Christ Jesus when he said, "Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils." She found then that God alone is Life, and that material existence and the so-called minds of mortals have no reality in the light of God's all-presence and all-power; for, as she tells us in the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 469): "Mind is God. The exterminator of error is the great truth that God, good, is the only Mind, and that the supposititious opposite of infinite Mind—called devil or evil—is not Mind, is not Truth, but error, without intelligence or reality."
