A loved hymn familiar to many Christians includes the refrain "I will cling to the old rugged cross, /And exchange it some day for a crown." George Bennard, "The old rugged cross," 1913 I sang it often with my family and friends and felt its spirit of deep faith. But I always stumbled over the words "some day." Why, I wondered, would the followers of Jesus cling to the cross indefinitely when it was apparent that the Master exchanged it for a crown as quickly as he could?
Through the study and practice of Christian Science, I have learned a degree of the present possibilities of that momentous exchange. Christ Jesus taught his followers, "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me." Luke 9:23 Willingness to obey the Christly command to take up the cross, coupled with a growing understanding of the Science of being, transforms the remote and unpredictable "some day" into a daily experience, for every step of spiritual progress, and the healing it includes, is a crown of triumph.
The cross, symbolic of the world's resistance to truth, showed up in Jesus' day in forms ranging from mere ignorance or indifference, to mockery, ridicule, and malicious contempt. In the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy states: "The real cross, which Jesus bore up the hill of grief, was the world's hatred of Truth and Love. Not the spear nor the material cross wrung from his faithful lips the plaintive cry, 'Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?' It was the possible loss of something more important than human life which moved him,—the possible misapprehension of the sublimest influence of his career." Science and Health, pp. 50-51
