At times the necessity of rededicating their lives to Christian Science is apparent to those who love Truth and realize the demand for continued inspiration if the Christ is to be revealed in its full power and glory. Often these times come when the threatening claims of evil need to be faced with renewed courage and their nothingness proved.
Dedication usually marks a beginning, a consecration occurring in the flush of fresh revelation, when Truth is "in [the] mouth sweet as honey" (Rev. 10:10). On the other hand, rededication must come when error is rebelling at Truth, fighting for self-preservation, resisting the resistless, defying Deity. This is the time when the digestion of Truth, its fuller assimilation, may seem bitter and unpalatable. It is a call for closer communion with God and a more confident yielding up of the false mortal sense of existence for real life in Spirit.
A notable rededication ceremony took place in Jerusalem in the year 164 B.C., when the Maccabees cleansed the temple after its pollution by heathen sacrifices under the rule of a Syrian conqueror. On this occasion the altar was rededicated to the one God, and a feast was inaugurated which the Jews celebrated annually, a ceremony sometimes called "The Feast of Dedication" —meaning literally renewal—sometimes called "The Feast of Purification," and sometimes "The Feast of Rededication."
It was during such a celebration that "Jesus walked in the temple in Solomon's porch" (John 10:23) and defended his doctrine of man's unity with the Father against his opponents. This feast must have meant far more than a ritual, or ceremony, to our Master. Here he came face to face with the rising resistance of the carnal mind to the truths he professed and proved, and his statements imply the spirit of his rededication to the demonstrable facts of being. "The works that I do in my Father's name, they bear witness of me," he said.
Christ Jesus utilized the same convincing argument when John the Baptist doubted his Messiahship. It is the answer with which Christian Science meets worldly opposition —proof of its theology as shown in the healing of human discords. Mary Baker Eddy says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 18), "Jesus acted boldly, against the accredited evidence of the senses, against Pharisaical creeds and practices, and he refuted all opponents with his healing power." Healing is always the correct answer to the enemies of spiritual progress, whether these enemies appear as spiritual apathy, indifference, and inertia, which would cloud the Christian Scientist's devotion within and rob him of his full Christian service to the race, or whether they be hateful misrepresentations of Science, which would storm our movement from without its ranks.
When our Way-shower celebrated "The Feast of Rededication" on that wintry day in Solomon's porch, he provided the metaphysical truths which empower one to overcome resistance to the Christ, God's spiritual ideal, appearing today through Christian Science. He affirmed the inseparable unity of Father and son, Mind and idea, an at-one-ment which he worked out through the liberation of the powers of Love as an enduring example for all men. He said (John 10:27), "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me." He continued, "No man is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand." He based his argument upon man's imperishable life in Spirit and silenced the boast of evil to interfere with the divine order of being. No enemy or enmity can prevent the faithful followers of Christ from proving man's immortal unity with his Maker.
The claims of error must be refuted. Mrs. Eddy explains this necessity in "Unity of Good," where she says (p. 54): "To admit that sin has any claim whatever, just or unjust, is to admit a dangerous fact. Hence the fact must be denied; for if sin's claim be allowed in any degree, then sin destroys the at-one-ment, or oneness with God,—a unity which sin recognizes as its most potent and deadly enemy."
These are arresting words. They stir us to more consecrated efforts to prove that unity of God and man which destroys sin. They help us resolve to throw off the errors, both within and without, that would make us less than inspired, less than harmonious, less than scientific in our estimate of others, less than capable of bringing comfort to mankind, less than one with God as His reflection.
It is the unity of man with God and our consistent demonstration of it that alerts us the moment we feel our love of Science growing cold or our interest in the church losing its keenness. Our inspiration and spirituality must be constantly increasing; our ability to heal must progress. If this is not happening, it is because we are not facing the foes of Truth diligently and courageously, not handling animal magnetism —not proving unreal the action of evil, which is enmity against God and His idea. It is animal magnetism that would resist the demonstration of Christian Science in ourselves and in our communities, and it is overcome by the demonstration of God's omnipotent will.
Destroying resistance to the divine will in ourselves, we are equipped to handle it in the community. One wonders where the human race might be today if animal magnetism, claiming to act as resistance to Spirit and its immaculate qualities of purity and love and integrity, had been faithfully handled by those who accepted Truth and professed to follow its precepts.
A firmer resolve to do more healing, to be a better friend to mankind, a more harmonious and diligent church member, a more intelligent citizen, a better example of man's sonship with God—these witness to genuine rededication to Truth. They speak of the silent communion with the Father which deepens purity of character and purpose and demonstrates the unity that is sin's "most potent and deadly enemy." As we rededicate ourselves in this way, we walk with the Master in Solomon's porch and are emboldened to face fearlessly and with divine authority the aggressive advocates of evil—the claims of materialism that would deny man's sonship with God and rob us of the spiritual inspiration that is the son's heritage. Then we shall be able to prove in the spirit of our Master (John 10: 30), "I and my Father are one."
