Our revered Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, clearly describes Jesus' earthly mission. She says (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 74), "Christ Jesus' sense of matter was the opposite of that which mortals entertain: his nativity was a spiritual and immortal sense of the ideal world. His earthly mission was to translate substance into its original meaning, Mind."
Jesus' sense of matter was different from that which mortals accept. At the pool of Bethesda, as he approached the man who had been impotent for thirty-eight years, the Master did not accept the false testimony of a diseased and helpless material body. He saw the spiritual idea, the man God made in His image and likeness, the complete expression of infinite, divine Mind. Jesus must have recognized instantly and clearly that the picture of impotence was but a phase of mortal belief, unreal and never any part of man, God's image.
This clear sense of the spiritual nature of man, of his eternal perfection, enabled the Master to perform the so-called miracles to which Mrs. Eddy refers in the same article: "He walked upon the waves; he turned the water into wine; he healed the sick and the sinner; he raised the dead, and rolled away the stone from the door of his own tomb." He was able to wipe out beliefs of hate, jealousy, and destruction, mortal apprehensions and so-called material laws. He had dominion over material laws, mortal fears, and over all belief in any life or intelligence in matter.
Substance always remains in God, Mind; but Jesus' mission was to transform men's finite beliefs of matter as substance and to teach mankind that real substance is Mind, Life, Truth, and Love, eternal and unchangeable. Clearly knowing and emphatically realizing these divine facts will help us to destroy any malicious or malignant belief, any mental picture of disease, sin, or death.
"Am I a God at hand, saith the Lord, and not a God afar off? Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him? saith the Lord. Do not I fill heaven and earth? saith the Lord" (Jer. 23:23, 24). The more clearly we discern the real man and universe, the more easily we detect the falsity of the counterfeit and thus eliminate material sense.
Jesus' earthly mission was to show us that God, eternal Life, fills all space, that infinite Mind actually pervades all. There is no presence other than the divine all-prescence. Truly Jesus' demonstration of infinite Spirit vanquished matter and its supposed laws and beliefs.
Mrs. Eddy further tells us, referring to the Master (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 74): "Walking the wave, he proved the fallacy of the theory that matter is substance; healing through Mind, he removed any supposition that matter is intelligent, or can recognize or express pain and pleasure. His triumph over the grave was an everlasting victory for Life; it demonstrated the lifelessness of matter, and the power and permanence of Spirit. He met and conquered the resistance of the world." This is the great work of Christian Science today: "to translate substance into its original meaning, Mind," and to meet and conquer "the resistance of the world," with its false beliefs.
It is most important that we consider carefully and follow consistently the steps cited in the foregoing passage from Mrs. Eddy's writings. Our Leader continues, "If you will admit, with me, that matter is neither substance, intelligence, nor Life, you may have all that is left of it; and you will have touched the hem of the garment of Jesus' idea of matter." That which has no life can never be in pain. That which has no intelligence cannot tell you that it is sick, suffering, or hungry. It is mortal mind that talks, suffers, and is sick, the suppositional lie about God and His creation. Since there is no truth in matter, no truth in any of its arguments for reality or substance, then matter must be a lie from beginning to end. Disease is only a state of mortal belief calling itself discordant matter.
Our work is to present the full evidence of divine being by the expression of health, joy, alertness, and dominion. The time is at hand for Christian Scientists to know with such clarity and conviction the power and presence of divine Love, eternal Life, Spirit, the only substance, that they will demonstrate these truths instantly. When we fully realize that there is no separation between divine Mind and its manifestation, we speak with authority as Jesus did and so fulfill our earthly mission.
We must know error's unreality and perceive the real man as God makes him and sustains him. Believing that body is material does not make it material. Even before error is brought to light as error, it is nothing, nobody, and nowhere. It is imperative to see clearly that a mortal belief, not matter, must be wiped out of consciousness and replaced with the fact of man's eternal life and spiritual perfection.
All the fears, misery, and anguish we experience are wrapped up in the belief that we are dealing with material persons rather than with Mind and its ideas. We say that God is All-in-all, and then we attempt to personalize or materialize man, Mind's infinite idea. As we recognize that all the strife, discord, and suffering we experience only provide for us another opportunity to prove the nothingness of evil, we learn to express our at-one-ment with God.
Since there is but one Mind, one infinite consciousness and its expression, we really cannot know or be conscious of anything but God and His spiritual creation. It was Jesus' earthly mission to "translate substance into its original meaning, Mind." Our mission today is to heal and regenerate false thinking. It is thus we demonstrate Christ, Truth, as ever present and available to all.
