IN defining her concept of the man Jesus, Mary Baker Eddy, the revelator of Christian Science, writes on page 589 of her textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures": "Jesus. The highest human corporeal concept of the divine idea, rebuking and destroying error and bringing to light man's immortality." Jesus demonstrated and exemplified the Christ. To those about him he appeared as a human being, but his knowledge of his spiritual identity, his divine sonship, that which constituted his true selfhood as the spiritual idea of God, existed entirely apart from the sense of a material body even as he went about his healing mission. John, speaking of Jesus' demonstration of the Christ, declared (John 1:14), "The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth." Here John was clearly recognizing and describing the coincidence of the divine with the human. The divinity of the Christ was revealed in the human life and example of the man Jesus. Godlikeness characterized his entire thought. All that he said and did gave evidence of his divine nature as God's son.
It was not what Jesus appeared to be humanly or personally that enabled him to demonstrate Christ. It was not his physical body that accomplished the works of healing. It was what he knew. It was what he was thinking. What Jesus knew spiritually governed what he seemed to be humanly; and in Christian Science we see that what we know spiritually will govern what we seem to be humanly. Christ Jesus' divine understanding had to become active and touch human existence in order that mankind might be redeemed and have proof and evidence of the power and presence of the spiritual idea. Jesus pointed the way of salvation. He showed us that the way of redemption is revealed through a knowledge of the Christ, a knowledge of man's true selfhood. As Peter declared (Acts 4: 12), "There is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved"—no other method, no other way of thinking, than Christ.
Christ, the spiritual idea, is always the Saviour. Obviously, Christ would have no meaning and no value if it did not reach the belief of materiality. It is because the human race is sick, sinning, and limited, because it is struggling with poverty and continually threatened by disease and death, that it wants and very much needs the Christ. The Master knew that Truth could be humanly demonstrated; otherwise men would never recognize its significance and value. To human sense he died once and for all, and thereby proved not only that death is unreal but that no one ought to die. He proved that death is a lie, an illusion, and utterly unreal. But he also taught that we must spiritually understand what Life really is, before we can prove the unreality of death.
