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"A HIGHER HUMANITY"

From the February 1940 issue of The Christian Science Journal


Were we to search the Scriptures, we could find no words that more perfectly define the ideal of the true humanitarian than those of Jesus: "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." This Christly gift of life, in all its wealth of joy and beauty, was his to bring, because he both possessed and understood it; he knew whence it came, how it might be preserved, and he brought it not to the circumscribed few, but to all who were willing to accept and utilize it. Those to whom Jesus referred were not merely his friends, his family, his fellow countrymen. This divine mission of benediction, of abundant good, was universal. The ignorant, the inimical, might resist it, might endeavor ruthlessly to destroy it, but Truth and Life had been revealed; in the receptive heart, wherever found, the seed would be sown and would spring up, bearing abundant fruit. The open door to the kingdom was for one and all who came to it in obedience and selflessness.

The full significance of this great event, this incarnation of Truth, dawned upon John, on the Isle of Patmos. Mary Baker Eddy describes it thus on page 561 of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures": "John saw the human and divine coincidence, shown in the man Jesus, as divinity embracing humanity in Life and its demonstration,—reducing to human perception and understanding the Life which is God."

This revelation of divinity to humanity, no longer afar off, to be worshiped and longed for, but comprehensible, available, actually all-embracing, was Jesus' supreme gift to the world. In every intrepid, compassionate word and action of our Leader, she has shown that this was her purpose and ideal, to make practical in men's lives the divinity which shapes and hallows their relations to each other, and which, in teaching them that God is their Life, destroys their false, limited sense of existence. As a result, Christian Science has brought health and joy to vast numbers who thought that for them life was well-nigh spent; and more abundant life to those who have grasped even in small measure the spirit of its teaching. Thus in our day there is to be found everywhere the evidence of "divinity embracing humanity in Life and its demonstration."

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