"O come, let us worship and bow down: let us kneel before the Lord our maker. For he is our God; and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand." In the record of Jesus' baptism, given in Matthew, we read of "a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." It is interesting to note that following this experience Jesus was "led up of the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil;" in other words, an opportunity presented itself to him to prove this positive statement of Truth—to prove man's unity with God, good.
Now let us in thought accompany this "beloved Son" of inestimable Love as he entered the sanctuary of quiet, earnest thinking, wherein to dissociate all human beliefs from the divine idea of God. In so doing, we shall gain a clearer understanding of the value of deep spiritual meditation in its capacity, first to uncover the modus operandi of mortal pretense and deceitfulness, and then to prove absolutely untenable the claim of any separation from the divine Mind.
It is recorded in Matthew that after fasting forty days and forty nights Jesus was "an hungred." And it was to this state of mortal thought—hunger, the sense of deprivation—that the first temptation was presented. Suggestive evil, or devil, said, "If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread." Through the argument of lack came the suggestion to usurp the authority and power of Spirit by performing a miracle. But the understanding of divine control was never for an instant deserted by this great missionary.
Using the spiritual vision with which he was endowed without measure, Jesus saw through the illusion of the material senses and positively and permanently denied each claim of animal magnetism as it presented itself. In this particular instance he saw that there could be no such thing as mortal mind to produce a topsy-turvy administration; and with thought humbly turned to God, the divine Mind, he made Scriptural answer to the would-be robber, "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." Thereby acknowledging one creator and one creation, he proved the unity of good and dismissed the claim of mortal mind through his complete submission to divine control.
This temptation to use spiritual power to produce material effects may come to the student of today. And should he give heed to the tempter's suggestions, he would fail in his mission as a Christian Science practitioner. If, on the other hand, he sees through the argument of animal magnetism and turns his thought to the truth that man is and always has been the son of God, "the spiritual image and likeness of God; the full representation of Mind," as Mrs. Eddy tells us on page 591 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," he will disclaim the robber-suggestion and proclaim the truth. Very naturally, then, matter being the subjective state of mortal mind, improved material conditions will symbolize better thinking until the pure, spiritual vision is accepted in its entirety, and all error, or matter, disappears out of the mental picture. Our work is to spiritualize human thinking through an understanding of the divine healing facts of Science.
In the second temptation which confronted Jesus, that of casting himself down from the pinnacle of the temple, he was approached by the same insinuating premise, "If thou be the Son of God." The argument translated into everyday human experience would suggest the use of mental power on the level of mortal mind. And are we not meeting this temptation almost every moment? How true it is that before we can accept the things of the world we must, in belief, have cast our thinking down from adherence to Truth to the level of evil belief; for the claim of evil can never come up to, or even approach, the level of conscious unity with good, our status as sons of God, divine Mind. And no such suggestion could have an appeal except through an indulgence of the beliefs in egotism, vanity, fear, and pride. Again the answer of Jesus was to the point, and gives us a rock of defense: "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God." We must not defy God by turning from Mind to matter for intelligence and life.
In the third temptation, that for mortal fame and power, evil suggestion paraded before Jesus "all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them," but with the invariable "if": "All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me." Seeing through the ignominy and falsity of this suggestion, Jesus answered, "Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve." Then, we are told, "the devil leaveth him, and, behold, angels came and ministered unto him."
So does each claim to mortality, as it wends its way through the wilderness of material beliefs, appear in one way or another, in similar human experiences. Christ Jesus is our Way-shower. First of all, it is well to see that Jesus mastered the insidious arguments of evil, alone, within his own consciousness, before he went out into the world to meet the collective forces of so-called organized materiality. The more closely we study the works, and follow in the footsteps of the Master, the more certain will be our reward in increasing understanding.
With the human senses, we see matter all around us—matter claiming to talk, to think, to live, and to die. The suggestion of limitation would seem to obscure or belittle, in the atheism of matter, the abundant supply of Spirit's ever present love. Mortal mind claims to see, hear, and feel through the material senses in conformity with the illusion of life and mind in matter. And as the mortal is educated further into the maze of materiality, he finds his second temptation—a desire for human aggrandizement, a willingness and sometimes an eagerness to entertain the claims of egotism, pride, and vanity. Then how easy it is, should there be indulgence of the second temptation, to fall headlong into the pitfall of the third—into the belief of material possessions, with avarice, lust, greed ever demanding more and more unbridled expression.
When these three temptations are seen for what they are—illusions, suggestions of a false, material concept—and are handled as Jesus handled them, we shall have started on the high road to dominion over all evil. For if we entertain these primary suggestions, we give evil the only field it can ever seem to have in which to perpetuate and multiply itself. As we have seen, Jesus met and mastered them, one by one, as they knocked for admittance at the door of his consciousness. And he met them after the forty days and forty nights of his fasting in the wilderness. Eventually, this demonstration must be made by each one; but let it be remembered that the only obstruction to, resistance to, or interference with an immediate solution of our problem is the entertainment of the belief, presented through hypnotic suggestion, that man lives in matter instead of in Mind.
Gratefully acknowledging and accepting the power of the Christ to annul all the so-called laws of the flesh, we gain an understanding that man's only dwelling place is in unity with God, Spirit, and that man is always in his infinite heavenly abode. Is not this conclusion in accord with Mrs. Eddy's statement on page 306 of Science and Health, "Thus Science proves man's existence to be intact"? Her further words show the line of demarcation between Truth and error: "The myriad forms of mortal thought, made manifest as matter, are not more distinct nor real to the material senses than are the Soul-created forms to spiritual sense, which cognizes Life as permanent." And she gives us this assurance: "Undisturbed amid the jarring testimony of the material senses, Science, still enthroned, is unfolding to mortals the immutable, harmonious, divine Principle,—is unfolding Life and the universe, ever present and eternal."
