CHRISTENDOM unites in declaring of God, "Thine is the ... glory, for ever." Individual concepts of the nature of divine glory may differ, but undoubtedly it is generally associated with the light and perfection of real being. And in Christian Science it is understood that this supreme excellence is never to be found in material splendor, but in the qualities which manifest God's nature. Since God is omnipresent, His light and holiness are likewise ever present, His perfection being perpetually expressed. Looking for the glory can mean, then, nothing less than endeavoring always to perceive the present spiritual fact, the harmony of real being, which, because of the nature of divine omnipresence, must be everywhere discernible to thought which is abiding in the Christ above the mist of material sense. That divine perfection is not uniformly and joyously recognized does not indicate the absence or the lack of its loveliness, but rather evidences the measure of the material discordance in our thinking.
Christ Jesus recognized God's glory, rejoiced in it, and, what is of immense importance to humanity, acknowledged that it was expressed in his own nature. He was aware of the relationship of man to God and knew that this actuality of being is demonstrable as it is understood; and in his prayer, as recorded in the Gospel of John, is his petition that the Son be glorified, that he might also glorify God. The perfection of being comes from God to man, and the Son must ever through divine reflection glorify God, the Father. Jesus declared that eternal life consists in recognition of this relationship—"that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent." And for the redeeming comfort of all his followers he said, "The glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: . . . that they may be made perfect in one."
The significance of glory, then, is the significance of oneness, perfect God and His perfect idea, man; and this truth of man's unity with God, the revelation of which came through Christ Jesus, and the later elucidation through Christian Science, is to be applied in human relationships as fast as it is demonstrably understood. Christ Jesus was a practical idealist, and what this divine unity meant to him is shown in his own works and in his directions pertaining to the practice which he required of his followers; for Jesus was teaching men a new way of living, a coming out of the ways of darkness, of unillumined thinking, of suffering, disunion, dismay. His realization of the Son's nature, as reflecting the radiance of Mind, enabled him to manifest spiritual power in the healing of sin and disease, and in the overcoming of death. And impressive among all these works, because essentially included in them all, his realization enabled him to forgive—destroy—enmity, the fundamental evil of mortal mind; for this "enmity against God" includes the entire dissevering sense which would, if it could, extinguish the glorious allness of God and perfection of the Son, the manifestation of infinite immortality. Jesus was doing more than forgiving specific wrongs, seemingly directed against himself, when he said, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." His forgiveness was striking at the root of all enmity, the belief that there can be something less than God's creation, the perfect man, in which belief originates all human strife.
