Many people are looking for salvation from human woes, failing to understand that the teachings and works of Jesus were for the purpose of proving the ever-availability of the Christ to meet human needs. They believe the Christ to be identical with Jesus, a special dispensation of divine power to him alone, and that his disciples received this power from him by personal impartation, thus limiting the power of the Christ to a time and a people of long ago. Yet this was not the teaching of the Master. He proclaimed the Christ to be universally available and demonstrable. He said (John 14:12), "He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father." Jesus knew that he performed his healing works through an understanding of divine Principle, and that all who understand this Principle can also heal.
Today, through this understanding, Christian Science is reinstating Christian healing as Jesus taught and practiced it. Through making the distinction between Jesus, the human man, and Christ, the healing and saving power of God, which Jesus loved, lived, and demonstrated, this Science is revealing the power of the Christ to be as present and as efficacious as in Jesus' time. In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mary Baker Eddy writes (p. 332): "Jesus was born of Mary. Christ is the true idea voicing good, the divine message from God to men speaking to the human consciousness. The Christ is incorporeal, spiritual, — yea, the divine image and likeness, dispelling the illusions of the senses; the Way, the Truth, and the Life, healing the sick and casting out evils, destroying sin, disease, and death." And in the following paragraph she says, "Jesus demonstrated Christ; he proved that Christ is the divine idea of God—the Holy Ghost, or Comforter, revealing the divine Principle, Love, and leading into all truth." Like Jesus, we need to acknowledge the Christ in all its fullness, to see it as the healing and saving power of God, the Comforter and Saviour for all time. We need to perceive the Christ as the spiritual idea of sonship, which recognizes God as the Father of man.
When speaking of his spiritual selfhood, the God-idea which he presented, Jesus said (John 14:6), "I am the way, the truth, and the life." To demonstrate the Christ as the way of harmonious living, the truth of perfect being, the Christly qualities which constitute spiritual sonship must be cultivated, treasured, and expressed. First and foremost is the need to express Christly love. How often Jesus pointed to love as the way to show forth the Christ. Through expressing Love we learn to understand the Iovableness, graciousness, and sweetness of true being and to manifest the strength, steadfastness, purity, selflessness, and goodness which elevate and bless human lives.
