EVEN at the time when Jesus knew that Judas Iscariot was conniving to betray him, the Master selflessly and inspiringly prepared his loyal disciples by both precept and promise for the severe trial of their faith which awaited them. He offered them words of counsel and comfort while instructing them in the verities of being; he told them of man's unity with God, the Father, and indicated how this divine inseparability might be realized and demonstrated. And in the words, "The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in me," Christ Jesus also pointed the spiritual means and method whereby his followers might be protected from believing evil and from being beguiled and befogged by the specious claims that evil and matter have power to confer pleasure and to inflict pain.
Christ Jesus knew, stated, and proved that God, Spirit, is the only Father or creator and governor of the universe, including individual man; he also understood, declared, and demonstrated that man's life and being are spiritual, not material, and therefore that health and harmony, wisdom and dominion—gifts of God —are inviolable and are available to all. This knowledge of the truth was so fixed in the consciousness of the Master that he could declare definitely that worldly beliefs, with their false claims to life, power, and law, found no response in him. When he was sorely tried and tempted in Gethsemane, Jesus was protected, uplifted, and delivered as a result of his prayer that the divine will, instead of the human will or the flesh, should be expressed in him. The response of his heart was to Truth, not to error, to good, not to evil, to Love and Life, not to evil and death; and so our dear Master was enabled to disprove all claims of evil in his victory over death and the grave.
By means of the inspired teachings in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" and her other writings, Mrs. Eddy makes plain the way whereby all may become acquainted with God as Jesus knew Him, and may gain the realization that man is God's child, spiritual and immortal, not material and mortal. Acceptance of the fact that God is infinite Truth, the all-knowing Mind, the all-governing Principle, the only Life, enables us to see that the devil, or evil, is a self-constituted and lawless falsity, even as the Master stated. This leads us to classify the effects of Satan, including sickness and sorrow, poverty and sin, discord and death, as false beliefs only, because nothing is true which is not of God, Truth. The recognition of these facts develops the further recognition that nothing is really a part of man's consciousness which is unlike divine Mind's ideas of good and perfection.
