Jesus came to bring light to a troubled world: but the Christ, or Messiah. which he so perfectly embodied and illustrated, has always been here. Speaking of the Christ, his spiritual selfhood, Jesus said (John 8:58), "Before Abraham was, I am." The Old Testament records that the spiritually-minded, who caught glimpses of the Christ, the true idea of God, and of God's unchanging, eternal laws, proved the power of God to heal, to protect, and to supply human needs.
The authority for Jesus' example came from God. The Master said (John 5: 36), "The works which the Father hath given me to finish, the same works that I do, bear witness of me, that the Father hath sent me." Jesus' theology and healing cannot be separated; and Christianity includes both. He discerned the spiritual law indicated in the Old Testament healings as the basis of his own wonderful works, which gave proof of his doctrine.
Mrs. Eddy writes on page 138 of Science and Health: "Jesus established in the Christian era the precedent for all Christianity, theology, and healing. Christians are under as direct orders now, as they were then, to be Christlike, to possess the Christ-spirit, to follow the Christexample, and to heal the sick as well as the sinning."
Many speak of theology as a study of religion instead of the Science of God, because they do not believe that God can be fully apprehended this side of the grave. But Jesus taught and demonstrated that eternal life is a present knowledge of God, a perfect state of consciousness. He proved that a correct understanding of God as incorporeal Spirit, Mind, and of man's relationship to Him as His reflection— spiritual, not material—brings salvation from sin, sickness, and death.
Jesus established a precedent for us that we might obey his injunctions and follow him in all his ways. He preached that "the kingdom of God is at hand" (Mark 1:15), and he unfolded the covenant wherein God's laws of Truth and Love are written in the minds and hearts of his followers. He healed all manner of disease and discord, raised the dead, and revealed God as the source of all true substance and supply. He showed us the nature of the love of God toward us, and he also showed us that we reflect God's love in loving our fellowmen. Mrs. Eddy affirms in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 25), "Christianity is Christlike only as it reiterates the word, repeats the works, and manifests the spirit of Christ."
After her healing from an injury that had been pronounced fatal, Mrs. Eddy humbly searched the Bible from beginning to end. Inspiration shed a light upon the passages that had perplexed scholars for generations, and she found the Bible teachings altogether demonstrable; and when she reasoned from the standpoint of perfect God and perfect man created in God's own image—one creator and one spiritual creation, one primal harmonious cause and its harmonious effect—she found these teachings also provable.
Mrs. Eddy states (Retrospection and Introspection, p. 25): "The Bible was my textbook. It answered my questions as to how I was healed; but the Scriptures had to me a new meaning, a new tongue. Their spiritual signification appeared; and I apprehended for the first time, in their spiritual meaning, Jesus' teaching and demonstration, and the Principle and rule of spiritual Science and metaphysical healing,—in a word, Christian Science."
The revelation that unfolded to our Leader came from God and vibrates with all the attributes of its divine source. It is warm, compassionate, aflame with divine Love. It is practical and provable, because it reveals God's laws, based on unchanging Principle; therefore it is scientific. It breathes into every inspired statement of the Bible the realization that it concerns our present, individual experience; it gives us assurance that now are we the man created in God's likeness and the recipient of every promise to that man.
Today Christian Science stands as the permanent unfoldment of Jesus' established precedent, built upon divine Principle, furnishing proof of its practical benefits to all mankind, and protected by the God-inspired Manual of The Mother Church, written by Mrs. Eddy, from every aggressive attempt to destroy it.
