THE experience of our Master, Christ Jesus, and of his disciples in the garden of Gethsemane on the night before his crucifixion furnishes a valuable lesson. It illustrates the fact, as taught in Christian Science, that salvation is individual, and that individual mental work or prayer is necessary.
Mrs. Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, defines "Gethsemane" on page 586 of her textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," thus: "Patient woe; the human yielding to the divine; love meeting no response, but still remaining love." Again, under the marginal heading "Gethsemane glorified," in speaking of Jesus' students, she writes (ibid., p. 48), "Could they not watch with him who, waiting and struggling in voiceless agony, held uncomplaining guard over a world?" The great distance between the Way-shower and his followers is brought out clearly here! The disciples slept. How little they understood the Saviour's mission, and the sacrifice he was about to make for them and for all mankind! The sorrowful rebuke given to Peter, one of a little band of men, about two thousand years ago, "What, could ye not watch with me one hour?" has come down through the ages, and has aroused many from the sensuous belief that man is separated from God.
Christian Science is teaching us how to keep an effective guard over our thinking, for it is there that the watch must be kept. The student of Christian Science who has reached the stage of spiritual unfoldment where he can hold "uncomplaining guard" over his own thinking, to the exclusion of all that would defile his own concept of God's spiritual, perfect universe, including man, has taken necessary steps towards becoming a successful practitioner of this Science. Someone may ask what it means to be a Christian Science practitioner. Reduced to the simplest terms, it means to practice and prove what one knows of God, good. If the world had more generally accepted this explanation of the so-called miracles performed by Jesus, instead of interpreting them as supernatural acts of God, we should not have had so much confusion, and so many contradictory theories and impossible explanations put forward in the name of Christ; and mankind would have progressed farther towards the goal of universal peace and good will.
