When Christ Jesus was confronted with his severest trial, the crucifixion, he turned in prayer to God. With these deeply significant words, he prayed: "Now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was."John 17:5; In this prayer, Jesus acknowledged God Himself to be his Father, established his sonship, and recognized his real selfhood to be the eternal Christ, the radiant reflection of God.
In "No and Yes," Mrs. Eddy declares: "The real Christ was unconscious of matter, of sin, disease, and death, and was conscious only of God, of good, of eternal Life, and harmony. Hence the human Jesus had a resort to his higher self and relation to the Father, and there could find rest from unreal trials in the conscious reality and royalty of his being,—holding the mortal as unreal, and the divine as real." No., p. 36; And she adds this statement: "It was this retreat from material to spiritual selfhood which recuperated him for triumph over sin, sickness, and death."
The Master's resort was based upon the Science of creation, in which God made man in His likeness and endowed him with dominion. Jesus understood that his actual selfhood was spiritual, derived from God; that it was inseparable from God; that it was timeless, changeless, and as perfect as it had always been, even "before the world was." In this clear consciousness, he found Spirit, not matter, to be power; Mind, not material sense, to be the only intelligence; good, not evil, to be always present; Principle, not physical law, to be the cause and control of action.
