Job"s faith and hope gained him the a.s.surance that the so-called sufferings of the flesh are unreal. We shall learn how false are the pleasures and pains of material sense, and behold the truth of being, as expressed in his conviction, "Yet in my flesh shall I see G.o.d;" that is, Now and here shall I behold G.o.d, divine Love.
The chaos of mortal mind is made the stepping-stone to the cosmos of immortal Mind.
If Jesus suffered, as the Scriptures declare, it must have been from the mentality of others; since all suffering comes from mind, not from matter, and there could be no sin or suffering in the Mind which is G.o.d. Not his own sins, but the sins of the world, "crucified the Lord of glory," and "put him to an open shame."
Holding a quickened sense of false environment, and suffering from mentality in opposition to Truth, are significant of that state of mind which the actual understanding of Christian Science first eliminates and then destroys.
In the divine order of Science every follower of Christ shares his cup of sorrows. He also suffereth in the flesh, and from the mentality which opposes the law of Spirit; but the divine law is supreme, for it freeth him from the law of sin and death.
Prophets and apostles suffered from the thoughts of others. Their conscious being was not fully exempt from physicality and the sense of sin.
Until he awakes from his delusion, he suffers least from sin who is a hardened sinner. The hypocrite"s affections must first be made to fret in their chains; and the pangs of h.e.l.l must lay hold of him ere he can change from flesh to Spirit, become acquainted with that Love which is without dissimulation and endureth all things. Such mental conditions as ingrat.i.tude, l.u.s.t, malice, hate, const.i.tute the miasma of earth. More obnoxious than Chinese stenchpots are these dispositions which offend the spiritual sense.
Anatomically considered, the design of the material senses is to warn mortals of the approach of danger by the pain they feel and occasion; but as this sense disappears it foresees the impending doom and foretells the pain. Man"s refuge is in spirituality, "under the shadow of the Almighty."
The cross is the central emblem of human history. Without it there is neither temptation nor glory. When Jesus turned and said, "Who hath touched me?" he must have felt the influence of the woman"s thought; for it is written that he felt that "virtue had gone out of him." His pure consciousness was discriminating, and rendered this infallible verdict; but he neither held her error by affinity nor by infirmity, for it was detected and dismissed.
This gospel of suffering brought life and bliss. This is earth"s Bethel in stone,--its pillow, supporting the ladder which reaches heaven.
Suffering was the confirmation of Paul"s faith. Through "a thorn in the flesh" he learned that spiritual grace was sufficient for him.
Peter rejoiced that he was found worthy to suffer for Christ; because to suffer with him is to reign with him.
Sorrow is the harbinger of joy. Mortal throes of anguish forward the birth of immortal being; but divine Science wipes away all tears.
The only conscious existence in the flesh is error of some sort,--sin, pain, death,--a false sense of life and happiness. Mortals, if at ease in so-called existence, are in their native element of error, and must become _dis-eased_, dis-quieted, before error is annihilated.
Jesus walked with bleeding feet the th.o.r.n.y earth-road, treading "the winepress alone." His persecutors said mockingly, "Save thyself, and come down from the cross." This was the very thing he _was_ doing, coming down from the cross, saving himself after the manner that he had taught, by the law of Spirit"s supremacy; and this was done through what is humanly called _agony_.
Even the ice-bound hypocrite melts in fervent heat, before he apprehends Christ as "the way." The Master"s sublime triumph over all mortal mentality was immortality"s goal. He was too wise not to be willing to test the full compa.s.s of human woe, being "in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin."
Thus the absolute unreality of sin, sickness, and death was revealed,--a revelation that beams on mortal sense as the midnight sun shines over the Polar Sea.
The Saviour"s Mission
If there is no reality in evil, why did the Messiah come to the world, and from what evils was it his purpose to save humankind? How, indeed, is he a Saviour, if the evils from which he saves are nonent.i.ties?
Jesus came to earth; but the Christ (that is, the divine idea of the divine Principle which made heaven and earth) was never absent from the earth and heaven; hence the phraseology of Jesus, who spoke of the Christ as one who came down from heaven, yet as "the Son of man _which is in heaven_." (John iii. 13.) By this we understand Christ to be the divine idea brought to the flesh in the son of Mary.
Salvation is as eternal as G.o.d. To mortal thought Jesus appeared as a child, and grew to manhood, to suffer before Pilate and on Calvary, because he could reach and teach mankind only through this conformity to mortal conditions; but Soul never saw the Saviour come and go, because the divine idea is always present.
Jesus came to rescue men from these very illusions to which he seemed to conform: from the illusion which calls sin real, and man a sinner, needing a Saviour; the illusion which calls sickness real, and man an invalid, needing a physician; the illusion that death is as real as Life. From such thoughts--mortal inventions, one and all--Christ Jesus came to save men, through ever-present and eternal good.
Mortal man is a kingdom divided against itself. With the same breath he articulates truth and error. We say that G.o.d is All, and there is none beside Him, and then talk of sin and sinners as real. We call G.o.d omnipotent and omnipresent, and then conjure up, from the dark abyss of nothingness, a powerful presence named _evil_. We say that harmony is real, and inharmony is its opposite, and therefore unreal; yet we descant upon sickness, sin, and death as realities.
With the tongue "bless we G.o.d, even the Father; and therewith curse we men, who are made after the similitude [human concept] of G.o.d. Out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be." (James iii. 9, 10.) Mortals are free moral agents, to choose whom they would serve. If G.o.d, then let them serve Him, and He will be unto them All-in-all.
If G.o.d is ever present, He is neither absent from Himself nor from the universe. Without Him, the universe would disappear, and s.p.a.ce, substance, and immortality be lost. St. Paul says, "And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins." (1 Corinthians xv. 17.) Christ cannot come to mortal and material sense, which sees not G.o.d. This false sense of substance must yield to His eternal presence, and so dissolve.
Rising above the false, to the true evidence of Life, is the resurrection that takes hold of eternal Truth. Coming and going belong to mortal consciousness. G.o.d is "the same yesterday, and to-day, and forever."
To material sense, Jesus first appeared as a helpless human babe; but to immortal and spiritual vision he was one with the Father, even the eternal idea of G.o.d, that was--and is--neither young nor old, neither dead nor risen. The mutations of mortal sense are the evening and the morning of human thought,--the twilight and dawn of earthly vision, which precedeth the nightless radiance of divine Life. Human perception, advancing toward the apprehension of its nothingness, halts, retreats, and again goes forward; but the divine Principle and Spirit and spiritual man are unchangeable,--neither advancing, retreating, nor halting.
Our highest sense of infinite good in this mortal sphere is but the sign and symbol, not the substance of good. Only faith and a feeble understanding make the earthly acme of human sense. "The life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of G.o.d." (Galatians ii.
20.)
Christian Science is both demonstration and fruition, but how attenuated are our demonstration and realization of this Science! Truth, in divine Science, is the stepping-stone to the understanding of G.o.d; but the broken and contrite heart soonest discerns this truth, even as the helpless sick are soonest healed by it. Invalids say, "I have recovered from sickness;"
when the fact really remains, in divine Science, that they never were sick.
The Christian saith, "Christ (G.o.d) died for me, and came to save me;" yet G.o.d dies not, and is the ever-presence that neither comes nor goes, and man is forever His image and likeness. "The things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal." (2 Corinthians iv. 18.) This is the mystery of G.o.dliness--that G.o.d, good, is never absent, and there is none beside good. Mortals can understand this only as they reach the Life of good, and learn that there is no Life in evil. Then shall it appear that the true ideal of omnipotent and ever-present good is an ideal wherein and wherefor there is no evil. Sin exists only as a sense, and not as Soul. Destroy this sense of sin, and sin disappears. Sickness, sin, or death is a false sense of Life and good. Destroy this trinity of error, and you find Truth.
In Science, Christ never died. In material sense Jesus died, and lived. The fleshly Jesus seemed to die, though he did not. The Truth or Life in divine Science--undisturbed by human error, sin, and death--saith forever, "I am the living G.o.d, and man is My idea, never in matter, nor resurrected from it." "Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen."
(Luke xxiv. 5, 6.) Mortal sense, confining itself to matter, is all that can be buried or resurrected.
Mary had risen to discern faintly G.o.d"s ever-presence, and that of His idea, man; but her mortal sense, reversing Science and spiritual understanding, interpreted this appearing as a risen Christ. The I AM was neither buried nor resurrected. The Way, the Truth, and the Life were never absent for a moment. This trinity of Love lives and reigns forever. Its kingdom, not apparent to material sense, never disappeared to spiritual sense, but remained forever in the Science of being. The so-called appearing, disappearing, and reappearing of ever-presence, in whom is no variableness or shadow of turning, is the false human sense of that light which shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not.
Summary
All that _is_, G.o.d created. If sin has any pretense of existence, G.o.d is responsible therefor; but there is no reality in sin, for G.o.d can no more behold it, or acknowledge it, than the sun can coexist with darkness.
To build the individual spiritual sense, conscious of only health, holiness, and heaven, on the foundations of an eternal Mind which is conscious of sickness, sin, and death, is a moral impossibility; for "other foundation can no man lay than that is laid." (1 Corinthians iii. 11.) The nearer we approximate to such a Mind, even if it were (or could be) G.o.d, the more real those mind-pictures would become to us; until the hope of ever eluding their dread presence must yield to despair, and the haunting sense of evil forever accompany our being.
Mortals may climb the smooth glaciers, leap the dark fissures, scale the treacherous ice, and stand on the summit of Mont Blanc; but they can never turn back what Deity knoweth, nor escape from identification with what dwelleth in the eternal Mind.