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.
The Christ, demonstrating Life, reveals man's life not as inherent in temporal matter but as the reflection of divine Principle, Life, and therefore uninterrupted. The Master proved the ceaseless vitality of life when on the Sabbath day he restored to active usefulness the withered hand of the one who, undaunted by the criticism of his materially-minded brethren, stretched it forth for healing. He proved that life is not subject to death when in three different instances he set aside the so-called evidence of death and restored to normal activity those who had seemed to die.
The Christ, bearing witness to Truth, reveals to human consciousness the actuality and tangibility of spiritual selfhood. It makes manifest the irresistible power of Truth to overthrow the pretensions of mortal belief claiming identification and manifestation in mortal selfhood and confirms the permanency and perfection of spiritual harmony already here. This power of the Christ is not something outside of man which God imparts as occasion demands. Rather is it the very nature and essence of God's own true being, forever expressed by man, His spiritual offspring.
In Science and Health we find this definition of Christ (p. 583): "The divine manifestation of God, which comes to the flesh to destroy incarnate error." The Christ, being inseparable from God as the divine manifestation of Himself, is also inseparable from man, God's reflection. As we manifest God and show forth the Christ, or spiritual idea of sonship, errors of the flesh are destroyed. The more we seek to let God be expressed in our lives, the more Christ holds sway in human consciousness. It was losing sight of the Christ as ever present and limiting it to the person of Jesus that caused mankind to lose the healing power of Christianity. How grateful we should be that we live in an age in which the true meaning and power of the Christ are restored! Through this divine influence, materialism, with its sorrows, pains, and limitations, disappears.
Jesus came as the mediator between God and men to show them man's oneness with Spirit. So today the impersonal Saviour, the Science of Christ, is bringing to men an understanding of man's relationship to God, of which humanity, now as in Jesus' time, seems woefully unaware. Not that man in God's image needs a mediator, but suffering humanity does need the Christ to light the way. Sometimes we ourselves show others the healing power of God, and again another imparts to our own struggling sense the comforting message of the Christ, Truth. Thus, through the Christ, we bless each other.
A beginner in the study of Christian Science who was laboring with a sense of illness went out to do some necessary errands. Soon she met another student of this Science whose countenance expressed the serenity and peace of spiritual understanding. With no word spoken between them the beginner glimpsed the power of the Christ to maintain harmony, and immediately she was healed of her trouble.
The obligation to demonstrate the Christ is no less imperative to us than it was to the Master. He furnished the measuring rod whereby we may determine how much of the Christ we are manifesting. When a messenger came from John the Baptist to inquire if he was indeed the Christ, Jesus said (Luke 7:22), "Go your way, and tell John what things ye have seen and heard; how that the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, to the poor the gospel is preached." Like our Master, we must measure our claim to know the Christ by the proofs we furnish of its healing power.
Error would sometimes make us believe that someone outside ourselves is hindering our demonstration of the Christ. If we are thus tempted, then we may be sure that we need to seek more spiritual growth, for only as our own thought departs from the Christ can evil seem to find entrance. However great the seeming wrong, hurt feelings, resentment, and fear are one's own misconception of man welling up. Pure Christliness perceives the spiritual perfection of our brother, in which is no desire and no ability to harm. When we acknowledge good as in reality inherent in everyone, we become a spiritual law to ourselves wherein evil is seen as unreal and so disarmed. Thus the way is opened for the all-power of infinite Love to manifest itself.
The Christ is the never-failing antidote for evil. When animal magnetism would have us accept erroneous conditions as realities, material walls which must be broken down, the Christ removes these seeming walls by revealing the glorious fact that there is in reality no matter; hence there are no material walls. There are in the true idea of God and man no walls of sickness, lack, limitation, loneliness, frustration, interference, sinful present or sinful past to hinder our advancement. There is never any error where error seems to be. There is just God and His manifestation.
The Christ, Truth, is simple enough to be applied to the most minor problem and mighty enough to heal the most difficult case. It is expressed in our spiritual love for each other, in our sheltering of each other when we falter, in our sustaining of each other when we faint, and in our scientific recognition of the perfect man. Sometimes it is conveyed in words or deeds; sometimes it is felt as a healing power radiating from consecrated thought.
The Christ banishes the false concept of man as separated from God and reveals the scientific unity existing between God and man and the divine law by which this unity is preserved. Through utilizing the precious Science of the Christ we can prove that man needs no salvation, but is whole and perfect now. That everyone must come to understand and demonstrate the Christ is made plain in our Leader's statement (Science and Health, p. 565), "The impersonation of the spiritual idea had a brief history in the earthly life of our Master; but 'of his kingdom there shall be no end,' for Christ, God's idea, will eventually rule all nations and peoples—imperatively, absolutely, finally—with divine Science."
