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CONTINUING LIGHT A series of articles from past periodicals with light for present needs

Fidelity of our Leader

From the October 1985 issue of The Christian Science Journal


The thought and life of Mary Baker Eddy, Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, followed reverently, consistently, the teaching and practice of the Master of Christianity, Christ Jesus. Because of this pure fidelity, the spiritual healing of disease and sin is being made known in the present day.

The life of the Master, to those who discern its significance, is a revelation of the power and the protection of good; it is an uncontestable proof that evil is not power. His entire ministry, with its culmination in his resurrection from the grave and his ascension, gives complete evidence that the presence of the Father, always with him, could annul every boast of evil. With Jesus there were no lapses. We find no single instance of his doing anything at any point but to return good for evil, and we see in this activity of good the protection of good for him who loved and lived it. The unchanging outlook of Christ Jesus upon the panorama of the claims of evil was summed in his own words, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." And this high compassion for the ignorance and sorrow of the sinner shielded him from the reactions of sin.

He who said that forgiveness should be until seventy times seven, he who healed the high priest's servant, when his follower in anger had struck off the servant's ear, was himself, by this very law and gospel of divine Love, delivered from the ultimate of the human dream —death itself. Jesus did not condone sin. He challenged the evil of his time, knowing it to be evil. It could not, however, enter his thoughts as real, because of the spiritual reality in which he always took refuge. The world of divine Love in which Jesus lived, the divine presence in which he held himself by his constant return of good for evil, barred out from him, as actual, both sin and suffering. These unlovely things could not operate against him. To him who would know as real only the bestowals of divine Love, good was power; evil was not power.

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