"Joy to the world, the Lord is come, Let earth receive her King"Christian Science Hymnal, No. 164; is the triumphant refrain we associate with the annual commemoration of the birth of Christ Jesus. Yet there were times of trial and hardship in the Master's earthly life. In later years, prophecy was fulfilled, and he undoubtedly deserved the description of "a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief."Isa. 53:3;
But it was not the sadness and the suffering and the setbacks that claimed his thought in the final stage of his human career. After the resurrection, as he walked with his disciples to Emmaus, he was apparently oblivious of the tragedy of Calvary. His thought was filled to overflowing with the triumphant proof he had given that life could not be overcome by death and that hatred could not extinguish the message of Love.
Though we may marvel at the courage and endurance Jesus displayed during periods of persecution, we would be losing sight of the most important aspects of his lifework if we dwelt unduly on these times of sorrow rather than on his victories.
Jesus had a strong conviction of his divine mission and place in prophecy. He knew that divine Spirit, the heavenly Father of all, had sent him to humanity to reveal the Christ, the true idea of divine Being, and to demonstrate man's sonship with God. In one of his periods of communion with God before the crucifixion, the Gospel tells us he said, "I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do."John 17:4;
The Master's God-appointed purpose was to awaken humanity from the deep sleep of false belief of life in matter to the recognition that in truth Life is divine, and the universe and man are the eternal manifestations of the one divine Life. His mission was to demonstrate true, spiritual being in terms that would penetrate the Adam-dream of finite life in matter and reveal reality as deathless and forever governed by immutable laws of harmony. Despite the resistance of the carnal mind, he finished this work and glorified the divine Father of all in countless signs and wonders.
It remains for us to receive the Christly revelation and to prove in our turn that since God is All, divine Life is invariably present—that He knows no birth or death, no beginning nor ending—and that His universe and man are eternally, gloriously alive, and this is the only truth of being. In our turn we have to demonstrate, as Jesus did, that God, Truth, being All, excludes the possibility of there being any other existence than the spiritual, perfect manifestation of His own nature. There is no life but the divine Life, and no knowledge but the spiritual understanding that emanates from the divine Mind.
History shows that proof of the allness of God, Spirit, and the nothingness and powerlessness of matter and evil is not won without trials. Christ Jesus, the prophets before him, and Christians after him—all experienced hardship. The Master prepared his followers throughout all time for the persecution that accompanies the stand for spiritual truth. "Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake," he said. "Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you."Matt. 5:11, 12; In some measure, all who accept the fact of God's, Spirit's, allness must meet error's resistance. Sometimes this may seem to take the form of physical and mental suffering, but we should not lose sight of the final blessing that always crowns the faithful.
The trials of Mrs. Eddy's mortal history, for instance, and of the Church she founded, should not arouse in her followers the same sense of desolation that so held Mary Magdalene's attention at the sepulcher where the body of her Lord had been laid that she failed to recognize the risen Jesus standing behind her. We should guard against being blinded to the triumphant signs of the activity of the Christ in human affairs, as the Master's disciples were blinded on the road to Emmaus. These men's thoughts were so fixed on the injustice and inhumanity of the events in Jerusalem that although Jesus was walking with them they did not know him. Mrs. Eddy writes, "It is well to know, dear reader, that our material, mortal history is but the record of dreams, not of man's real existence, and the dream has no place in the Science of being."Retrospection and Introspection, p. 21;
If we are tempted to mourn over the tribulations of present-day Christians and their churches as Mary did when she said, "They have taken away the Lord ..., and we know not where they have laid him,"John 20:2; should we not rather turn from sorrow and rejoice in the truth, which Christian Science maintains, that Christ has never left. Mrs. Eddy says, "Christ is Truth, and Truth is always here,—the impersonal Saviour."Miscellaneous Writings, p. 180. Millions of people on earth today who have been healed and comforted through Christ's revelation of true being bear witness to this fact. Surely, we can wholeheartedly join the Christmas refrain, "Joy to the world, the Lord is come." And we can follow it with the prayer, "Let earth receive her King."
