THE cross and crown emblem familiar to Christian Scientists includes the motto (Matt. 10:8, Am. Stand. Ver.) "Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons." This motto is a quotation from Jesus' injunctions to his twelve disciples as he sent them forth to minister "to the lost sheep of the house of Israel" (verse 6).
The emblem appears on the front cover and title page of all of Mrs. Eddy's writings and on the quarterly, monthly, and weekly periodicals of The Christian Science Publishing Society. The purpose is dual; the emblem is the registered trademark of those publications, and it has a deep and useful spiritual significance.
The third edition of Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy, now entitled "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," was published in 1881 and was the first edition to bear this notable emblem. Interestingly, this edition resembled the present final edition of 1910 more closely than did either of the two earlier editions. The form of the emblem at first varied slightly from its present appearance, and in 1908, in accordance with Mrs. Eddy's wishes, it was put into its final form.
At this time there were questions regarding the changed proportions in the design. Through an editorial in The Christian Science Journal it was made clear that the changes were purely artistic. The revision introduced what is known in heraldry as a celestial crown, or sometimes as the Christian crown, the one described in the book of Revelation. This crown is far more appropriate to the thought of the emblem than the former coronet. The cross was made larger, but this was not intended to indicate that the cross we bear as Christian Scientists was to be considered heavier than before.
Mrs. Eddy has much to say in her writings about the spiritual significance of the cross and the crown. On page 50 of Science and Health, she tells us, "The real cross, which Jesus bore up the hill of grief, was the world's hatred of Truth and Love." And she concludes the chapter entitled "Footsteps of Truth" with these words (ibid., p. 254): "If you launch your bark upon the ever-agitated but healthful waters of truth, you will encounter storms. Your good will be evil spoken of. This is the cross. Take it up and bear it, for through it you win and wear the crown. Pilgrim on earth, thy home is heaven; stranger, thou art the guest of God." The marginal heading of this paragraph is "The cross and crown."
In our human experience, as we launch our bark—apply the Christ, Truth, to circumstances confronting us for solution—we find that whatever elements of crossbearing appear hateful, uncomfortable, disagreeable, or painful are unreal beliefs, which human sense would try to persuade us to accept as reality.
Mortal mind dislikes seeing itself disbelieved and dissolved, seeing its empire crumbled. The world's hatred and rejection of the truths Christ Jesus taught would bear us down, wear us down, under a crushing load—but a load of what? Discerning Jesus' experience, we see these burdens as no part of man as God's idea, our only true selfhood; we see them as totally unreal and as weighing less than a knapsack of nothing.
Crossbearing in one sense is the denial of the many claims of the world and the affirmation of the realities of Christ's kingdom. We cannot skip handling error in our experience any more than Jesus could have completed his life as the Way-shower without bearing his cross. In a Christian Science treatment of an inharmonious situation, these two basic elements are considered equally important: realizing the nothingness of the false picture and demonstrating the presence and power of Truth. By taking up the cross, handling and rejecting the untrue arguments, seeing their unreality and impossibility in the infinite realm of the spiritual, we find that Jesus' promise, "My yoke is easy, and my burden is light" (Matt. 11:30), is true.
After his Sermon on the Mount, which begins in Matthew 5, Jesus proceeded to illustrate his teachings with some of his most inspired healings. These included the cleansing of the leper, the healing of the centurion's servant, the restoration of sanity to the two men possessed with devils, and the raising of the palsied man from his bed. Significantly, it was the spiritual import of this last healing which caused Mrs. Eddy's own delivery from a material sentence of death after a fall on an icy sidewalk in 1866, an event which marked her first glimpse of the timeless Christ-principle of Jesus' healing method.
After healing the man sick of the palsy, Jesus raised Jairus' daughter from death, freed a woman from a twelve years' issue of blood, opened the eyes of the blind, and loosened the tongue of the dumb. As Jesus taught, preached, and healed throughout the countryside, thronged by the multitudes that followed him, he observed that they were "scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd" (Matt. 9:36). It was at this point that Jesus voiced the need for more laborers for his harvest and sent his disciples forth to heal the sick.
With this background, how precious become the words he spoke to them as given in the King James Version, "Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils." He had just illustrated all four commands for his disciples. Now they were dispatched to follow his example. Jesus made it clear that all who follow him in deed are his disciples, and so we are as we fulfill these demands with power and understanding.
The six words which follow the four commands, "Freely ye have received, freely give," also have a pertinence to the cross and crown motif. Jesus gave the truths of God's kingdom with patience, persistence, and impartiality to all who were hungering, and in this giving he spiritually perceived the level of thought of his listeners and students and adapted his approach to their ability to understand. In this way, his disciples were enabled to receive the word of God unhindered, freely.
Nowhere is the simplicity of Truth more apparent than in the Sermon on the Mount and in Jesus' parables. His students then and now respond to his teachings with an open heart and open mind, through love and understanding. Freely we receive as Christ Jesus' love becomes to us the essence of what he taught. Freely we receive as each day more materiality melts away.
And we are admonished to freely give. The best pattern for this giving is found in the Golden Rule, "As ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise" (Luke 6:31). Applying our growing understanding of Christ's kingdom, rejecting the temptations of matter's supposed reality, and sharing our inspirations of Christian Science with others form our continual repayment of our debt of gratitude. Our response to receiving freely is to give freely from our experience, as our Master did: sowing our seed on good ground, binding the wheat at the harvest, and burning the tares.
The cross and the crown are symbolically pictured together. Giving and receiving are likewise a simultaneous process. Crossbearing and crown wearing go on daily; each lesson has its own reward, and each step is an upward one.
The dual necessities of the cross and the crown in our human experience are emphasized by their importance in our daily application and demonstration of Christian Science, the Science of the Christ. In these demonstrations, which fulfill the words circling the interlocked cross and crown, we assuredly must first bear the cross, as Jesus bids us.
The crown of rejoicing, the Christian crown, is ours only as we see the spiritual significance of this crossbearing. The cross is only as heavy as the false beliefs we mistakently accept, and we win the crown as we turn away from the darkness and shadows of mortality, nothingness, to the light of Christ and recognize ourselves as perfect ideas of God, good, free and: burdenless.
