"The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ," declared John. United in having the same source of inspiration, both the Decalogue and the gospel of our Master are revelations of divine law. But the healing ministry of Christ Jesus marked a distinct advance in the understanding of God as infinite Spirit, Love, and of the power of God's law to save from sin, disease, and death.
For centuries, knowledge of the healing power of God's law seemed lost, until a lone woman, Mary Baker Eddy, armed with faith in God, searched the Bible, sought and found the truth, and later wrote in her textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 107), "In the year 1866, I discovered the Christ Science or divine laws of Life, Truth, and Love, and named my discovery Christian Science." This discovery has illumined the Ten Commandments, verified the unity of the Decalogue with the gospel of Christ Jesus, restored to religion Truth's healing power, and revealed the Science of God's government, in which Love is the Lawgiver.
This final revelation of the Christ, in Christian Science, renders the Scriptural presentation of God's law completely demonstrable. Our discipleship consists in learning how to unite obedience to the law and the gospel in the healing ministry of Christian Science. In connection with this ministry, our revered Leader gives the following in her definition of "Moses" (ibid., p. 592):"A type of moral law and the demonstration thereof; the proof that, without the gospel,—the union of justice and affection,—there is something spiritually lacking, since justice demands penalties under the law." The Decalogue emphasizes need for obedience to God; the gospel invites spontaneous love for Him. The moral law states a rule of right living; the gospel shows how to demonstrate Life. The moral law prohibits sin; spiritual understanding of God's law destroys sin. Who has not found it easier to be just than to be merciful; to prescribe a penalty in the name of justice than to heal a sinner in demonstration of mercy? As we harmonize these essential unfoldments of God's law in our daily lives, the result is justice, divinely inspired, humanly manifested in individual self-government, less criticism and assertion of human will, more grace and gentleness to happify our homes, our church relations, our business and civic activities.
As presented in the Old Testament, divine justice sometimes seems to be a judgment against men instead of against error, more punitive than redemptive, more a restraint than a help in time of trouble. But the perfect love of Christ Jesus condemned the error, not the individual. His justice and compassion transcended human ethics, as, for example, when he fed the five thousand, and when he healed the penitent Magdalen. He exalted justice by wondrous love and tenderness. The gospel, fulfilling the moral law, sweeps the full chord of demonstrable Christianity, and shows the omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence of divine Principle, Love, tenderly feeding the affections of men with those graces Spirit supplies— purity, honesty, faith, meekness, and holiness, against which there is no judgment.
Jesus perceived in the two toiling fishermen qualities which enabled them to recognize the Messiah, "and they straightway left their nets, and followed him." A new life began for them, a new day for all mankind. Their recompense for renunciation resided in their fitness for discipleship which the call implied, and also in the opportunity it afforded them to serve in the work of Christ-healing which the Master was to teach them to do.
Simon and Andrew might have remained fishermen but for the Master's disciplined thinking. This enabled him to discern their receptivity and awaken in them a sense of their spiritual capacity to recognize and demonstrate good through an affection for God, whose strength would be in their lives both law and gospel. Then, at Jesus' bidding, they became fishers of men.
Behold their willingness to give up the material—to let go! This is a cardinal test of discipleship. Is not the assumption of this discipleship in daily life our great need today? Could any innovation be more salutary than a change from acquisitiveness to unselfed service? In this growth in grace we understand that every requirement of divine Principle, Love, is a cross of judgment to the resistance to Truth in our thinking. But as the true sense of discipleship unfolds, our cross is replaced by a crown of rejoicing.
How winningly the words and example of the Way-shower illumine our path! A lawyer asked him, 'Which is the great commandment in the law?" and to the questioner, skilled in elaborate rabbinical law, Jesus summarized the Commandments in the two requirements: love for God and love for one another. This remarkable evaluation of the Commandments in terms of Love uniformly distinguishes Jesus' teaching and explains the function of discipleship with reference to both law and gospel.
With what simplicity the children in the Christian Science Sunday School accept the truth!
"And simple trust can find Thy ways
We miss with chart of creeds."
The Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer and its spiritual interpretation, as given in Science and Health (pp. 16, 17), and the Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount are the first lessons taught the children in the Sunday school. Joyously these receptive scholars apply the Decalogue and the gospel truths which they learn to love, healing themselves and others who come within the radius of their purity and unaffected goodness.
The Sunday school students may, in due course, normally and properly enter into church membership. They, like all, must verify their discipleship in increased alert spiritual responsiveness, a loving obedience like that of Simon and Andrew, when Christ Jesus commanded them to follow him. Whosoever would be a fisher of men in our loved Cause, whosoever would bring comfort, cheer, and healing to receptive hearts, must gratefully renounce the modes and aims of personal sense to become a church worker and builder in the Scriptural and scientific sense. How heavenly is the call inspiring such desires!
When Jesus called Simon and Andrew, he began to form his church. He invited participation in the law and collective discipleship. That call tenderly indicates one of the most sacred duties of the church today, that of welcoming new members into it. It is the church's solemn obligation to aid those elected to membership in realizing something of the inspiration and Christlike fellowship which transformed ordinary fishermen into disciples of Christ. An effective means of propaganda in the early Christian church, we may confidently assume, was the forbearance and forgiveness, the uncritical attitude, of its members; and it should be ours today.
Nowhere is there greater need for a wise blending of the law and the gospel than in branch church bylaws. Their purpose is to promote discipleship, not to stress penalties. Love's rod, as well as Love's staff, comforts and heals. The wise provisions of branch church by-laws are sanctioned by Love, thus advancing the moral and spiritual welfare of the individual. In cases of discipline, though offenses may be grievous, requiring correction, responsibility for constructive guidance and for the kind of justice that wins loyalty and love rests definitely on the church.
In the New Testament, disciples were also called learners, brethren, saints, or men set apart for God's service, the faithful, the elect. These terms imply that the most sacred service was imparting the gospel. This discipleship appraises scholarship by good deeds. Length of years in the study of Christian Science should be a badge of responsible stewardship. Spiritual progress is not marked by calendars. And the end of discipleship is not only to acquire proficiency in the letter of the law, but also to distribute the blessings of the gospel, the spirit of divine law.
The law and the gospel of Christian discipleship are destined to affect profoundly ordinary concepts of human government, law, and justice. An important function of governments is the making of laws. The presumptive purpose of these laws is to insure to everyone security and equality of rights. Obedience is enforced when not voluntarily given, and there are disciplining penalties for infraction. The result does not always represent justice. And yet, considering the growing complexity of human activities, there is need not only for prompt and impartial administration of justice, but also for compassion that is intuitive and humane, with emphasis laid on motives rather than on legal technicalities. That justice would be enlightened if human laws were always inspired by patience, wisdom, understanding, and love is obvious; but that God is the author of these qualities is a fact more slowly, though nevertheless surely, dawning on human thought.
"As you work, the ages win," Mrs. Eddy pointedly reminds us on page 188 of her work, "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany." As our discipleship gains in spiritual power, we shall more effectively help to supply what the whole world needs —the assurance that there is no lack of good. Nations and individuals alike need to be freed from severe judicial attitudes, criticism, rivalry, jealousy, and worldly ambition. As Love removes these evil clamps, right requirements of human law and a desire to observe them go hand in hand, and a higher sense of justice is achieved. Men everywhere will cooperate voluntarily, understand one another better, and so foster a nobler helpfulness toward the peace that God alone gives.
This world-wide mission of Christian Science must continue until the church temporal shall have shown the way to the church triumphant. "And the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it: and the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honour into it." What is this glory and honor of nations but the universal brotherhood of man, uniting through disciplined obedience and affection the justice and mercy of God, the law of Love!
