What has this hillside priest, this seaside teacher, done for the human
race? Ask, rather, what has he _not_ done. His holy humility,
unworldliness, and self-abandonment wrought infinite results. The method
of his religion was not too simple to be sublime, nor was his power so
exalted as to be unavailable for the needs of suffering mortals, whose
wounds he healed by Truth and Love.
His order of ministration was "first the blade, then the ear, after that
the full corn in the ear." May we unloose the latchets of his Christliness,
inherit his legacy of love, and reach the fruition of his promise: "If ye
abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it
shall be done unto you."
WAYMARKS
In the first century of the Christian era Jesus went about doing good. The
evangelists of those days wandered about. Christ, or the spiritual idea,
appeared to human consciousness as the man Jesus. At the present epoch the
human concept of Christ is based on the incorporeal divine Principle of
man, and Science has elevated this idea and established its rules in
consonance with their Principle. Hear this saying of our Master, "And I, if
I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me."
The ideal of God is no longer impersonated as a waif or wanderer; and Truth
is not fragmentary, disconnected, unsystematic, but concentrated and
immovably fixed in Principle. The best spiritual type of Christly method
for uplifting human thought and imparting divine Truth, is stationary
power, stillness, and strength; and when this spiritual ideal is made our
own, it becomes the model for human action.
St. Paul said to the Athenians, "For in Him we live, and move, and have our
being." This statement is in substance identical with my own: "There is no
life, truth, substance, nor intelligence in matter." It is quite clear that
as yet this grandest verity has not been fully demonstrated, but it is
nevertheless true. If Christian Science reiterates St. Paul's teaching, we,
as Christian Scientists, should give to the world convincing proof of the
validity of this scientific statement of being. Having perceived, in
advance of others, this scientific fact, we owe to ourselves and to the
world a struggle for its demonstration.
At some period and in some way the conclusion must be met that whatsoever
seems true, and yet contradicts divine Science and St. Paul's text, must be
and is false; and that whatsoever seems to be good, and yet errs, though
acknowledging the true way, is really evil.
As dross is separated from gold, so Christ's baptism of fire, his
purification through suffering, consumes whatsoever is of sin. Therefore
this purgation of divine mercy, destroying all error, leaves no flesh, no
matter, to the mental consciousness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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