"If thou be the Christ, tell us plainly" (John 10:24). This insistent demand of the Jews was never met to their satisfaction, despite all the marvelous works and inspired teachings of Christ Jesus. Hypocrisy, self-righteousness, and sensuousness blinded them to the import of the Master's wondrous career. Even the humble, earnest, devoted disciples of Jesus were slow to comprehend his words and works sufficiently to emulate him. Their belief that the personal, corporeal Jesus was the Saviour of the world had first to yield to the higher understanding of the impersonal, incorporeal, ever-present Saviour— Christ, Truth—before they could follow Jesus' example in the way that he required.
Speaking of the Wisemen, who earliest went to worship Jesus, Mary Baker Eddy says in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 164), "Their highest human concept of the man Jesus, that portrayed him as the only Son of God, the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and Truth, will become so magnified to human sense, by means of the lens of Science, as to reveal man collectively, as individually, to be the son of God." Today in Christian Science the Christ is plainly revealed as the divine idea of the divine Principle or Father, God; and this infinite idea, or manifestation, of God, this "only begotten of the Father, full of grace and Truth," is found, as in Jesus' time, taking away the sins of the world and destroying incarnate error.
It was because Jesus could at all times say (John 10:30), "I and my Father are one," that he merited the title Christ Jesus, or Jesus the Christ. His consciousness was constantly at one with his divine Principle, Love, for he embodied the true idea and divine sense of being. This divinity of consciousness accounted for the Master's marvelous works; and it is the ever-presence and universal availability of the divine consciousness, the divine idea, or Christ, which renders it possible for all who accept and understand Jesus' teachings to follow in his loving footsteps, healing the sick and redeeming the sinner.
