Men everywhere have accorded a high place to Christ Jesus as a teacher, and he has inspired the love and devotion of his followers as no one else ever did, but it is obvious in the light of Christian Science that even among earnest Christians his teaching has commonly been undervalued. It is capable of blessing them more than they have known. It is, this Science shows unmistakably, a teaching of such liberation and enrichment as the world has scarcely yet dreamed of. The Master spoke plainly on this point. He said, "If ye continue in my word, ... ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free"—free, of course, according to his high standard of freedom. He said, "There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake, and the gospel's, but he shall receive an hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal life." And he said, "If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death." Words could scarcely have been clearer, but Christendom has been slow to believe that things so good could be true, slow to accord the words their full value.
It was, of course, no mere material enrichment of which he was speaking. In his parable of the man who would build bigger barns, and in many other utterances, he showed the poverty of such so-called wealth unaccompanied by enlightenment. He was teaching of riches which come about through the liberation of thought from false limiting beliefs, through ideas expressive of the illimitable capacities of Mind, Spirit; but he showed that these are by no means lesser riches than the other, that they are vastly greater, and that their natural effect as they appear more fully must be to alter the whole face of human experience, so that all will have what they need without stint.
It was characteristic of the Master's teaching that he continually summed up in few words the necessary practical procedure for his followers, and he did this, helpfully indeed, in a sentence recorded in the sixth chapter of Matthew. He had counseled those about him not to be anxious concerning the material things they required, manifestly implying that they need not be so. And then he said plainly, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you."
