In 1901, in her Message to The Mother Church for that year, Mary Baker Eddy paid reverent and inspiring tribute to the spirituallyminded men under whose tutelage she had received her early religious training. "The lives of those old-fashioned leaders of religion," she wrote (p. 32), "explain in a few words a good man." And earlier on the same page she declared that "God seemed to shield the whole world in their hearts, and they were willing to renounce all for Him." As students of Christian Science, may we not find in this beautiful commendation some indication of what our Leader considered true devotion to the Christ? The Master himself said, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."
That Jesus did his own work for the sake of all humanity, even unto "the least," Christians universally agree, and the word "sake" becomes meaningful in the light of its derivation. It comes from the Anglo-Saxon word meaning "strife" or "lawsuit," implying that whatever is done for the sake of someone is done out of consideration for his rights and in defense of his privileges. Thus it could be said that Jesus' work was done for the sake of protecting or preserving men from the accusations of material sense; it was done for the sake of proving to them what Life really is. Jesus was not deceived by the material senses. Because he knew God, he beheld God's creation, and this true beholding, as Mrs. Eddy has taught us, heals the sick (see Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, pp. 476, 477).
Christian Science enables the student to emulate Jesus' practice because it reveals the true idea of God, Spirit, as infinite, incorporeal, unchanging Love, the Mind and Life of all that really is. By allowing the activity of Truth to purge his consciousness, the Christian Scientist overcomes, in progressive degrees, whatever hides from him the actuality of divine being. This attainment means the gaining of a true sense of one's spiritual selfhood, and this involves the highest selflessness, the largest sense of love, for in purifying one's thinking with regard to existence, and in finding one's own identity in God, one also is finding the truth about all identity. And Christian Science is that "with which can be discerned the spiritual fact of whatever the material senses behold" (ibid., p. 585).
