When our great Master, Christ Jesus, "sat at meat" with a number of publicans and sinners, the Pharisees were considerably shocked. Jesus rebuked them with the statement (Matt. 9:13), "I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." The great Nazarene, who referred to his true selfhood as "the way, the truth, and the life" (John 14:6), recognized the spiritual need of those who had strayed from the narrow path of goodness.
Christ, Truth, is always present to guide those who might otherwise lose their way and to direct back to the heavenly highway those who have departed from it. Christian Science shows how one may utilize the Christ in gaining full salvation. Mary Baker Eddy writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 332), "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."
On a hillside in northern England, a shepherd was observed leading his flock from one pasture to another through a narrow aperture in a thick hedge. All the sheep except one passed through the opening obediently. The recalcitrant one broke from the flock and attempted vainly to force its way through at a different point. The alert sheep dog saw the straying animal and at first ran behind it to direct it back to the right passageway. But seeing that the sheep was becoming more entangled in the dense growth, the dog raced through the gap in the hedge to the opposite side and faced the struggling creature. The sheep then backed out and obediently rejoined the flock.
