“Oh! for that robe of righteousness that is without a seam, without a single crevice through which error can enter. That garment not sown together by human hands, woven by the edicts of the Schools and held together by sects. Jesus was a humanitarian; his was the earnest love, the mighty Truth, the gentle charity which formed a robe to touch but the hem whereof healed the sick. Laying down to pleasant dreams is not the hard work and earnest self-abnegation by which we benefit our race. It is not having our garments washed and made white in the blood of the Lamb. Oh! for that unselfish Love that inspired the martyrs and stimulated the cross-bearing Christianity of old, gentle as the Lamb that thinketh no evil, that licks the hand just raised to shed its blood. We have much to do before we are Christians, much to lay down, much to take up. Life is real, Life is earnest, and the grave is not its goal …” (A10599, © The Mary Baker Eddy Collection, The Mary Baker Eddy Library; punctuation added for readability).
Mary Baker Eddy dictated this statement to a student sometime around 1880. A humanitarian cares for and commits to improving the lives of others—a description we’d all hope to fit. Applied to the life of Christ Jesus, though, it means that and more. He was a humanitarian who improved lives by decisively and immediately healing them.
There’s no greater need than for more reformers of this sort, who weave a consciousness made of “the earnest love, the mighty Truth, the gentle charity,” that Jesus had. Some of his early and later followers, including Mrs. Eddy, proved that those who have such an illumined consciousness can bring about life-changing effects in those they encounter.
