"When error confronts you, withhold not the rebuke or the explanation which destroys error," writes Mary Baker Eddy on page 452 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." A study of the Gospels reveals that many times the rebukes of Christ Jesus destroyed error, healed the individual, and restored calm. That such results do not more frequently follow rebuke indicates the need for gaining a higher spiritual understanding of the subject.
Whatever Jesus may have said in loosing those bound by sickness, liberating the sinner, and stilling the angry elements, he was always motivated by love for mankind. Because he so clearly understood that material life and intelligence are unreal and that God, good, is all-inclusive, his rebukes were not personal or self-righteous, and they were instantly effective.
When the Master rebuked the boisterous winds and waves, "there was a great calm" (Matt. 8:26). He rebuked demons, or unclean spirits, and they came out. When Simon's wife's mother was afflicted with a fever, it is recorded of Jesus (Luke 4:39), "He stood over her, and rebuked the fever; and it left her: and immediately she arose and ministered unto them." He sternly rebuked his disciples' lapses from spiritually enlightened thinking.
