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JUDGE SEPTIMUS J. HANNA, CSD
Some of these prophecies are direct and literal; others are figurative and more or less obscure, that is in the letter, but spiritually discerned they are wondrously illuminative. An understanding of them establishes in consciousness that assured sense of the nature, character, and office of Jesus the Christ without which we cannot know God. It is not too much to say, moreover, that we can know the eternal Christ only as we study, understand, and apply the teachings of the Master. We must learn first of his humanity, and through the understanding of his humanity, come into the understanding of his divinity. On page 54 of Science and Health Mrs. Eddy says: "Through the magnitude of his human life, he demonstrated the divine Life. Out of the amplitude of his pure affection, he defined Love. With the affluence of Truth, he vanquished error. The world acknowledged not his righteousness, seeing it not; but earth received the harmony his glorified example introduced." The fact that "God was manifest" to humanity through Christ Jesus, as St. Paul tells us in his first epistle to Timothy, establishes at once his humanity and his divinity. This corelation constitutes his full individuality. This duality of his nature and character is that which distinguishes him from all others and places him, as the Scriptures declare, "far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come." It was this transcendent vision of the Messiah that caused Zacharias, when filled with the Holy Ghost, to shout forth his praise as recorded in the first chapter of Luke's gospel: "Blessed be the Lord God of Israel; for he hath visited and redeemed his people, and hath raised up an horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David; as he spake by the mouth of his holy prophets, which have been since the world began." It was this spiritual perception which caused Mary the virgin mother to sound her exalted notes of joy: "My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour. For he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden: for, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed." We here see her relation to Jesus the Christ and to sacred history. It is interesting and instructive to note in this connection how distinctly our Leader brings out this relation in her writings, especially on page 332 of Science and Health. It was this same Jesus the Christ to whom the Master referred in talking to two of his disciples on the way to Emmaus after his resurrection, as recorded in the twenty-fourth chapter of Luke: "O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken . . . And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself." We should carefully note the word "all" as here used. It was this same Christ-man that spake through John the revelator when he defined his own nature, character, and office: "I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty;" and likewise this: "I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore. Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death." On page 334 of Science and Health we find the following explanation of this passage; "This is a mystical statement of the eternity of the Christ, and is also a reference to the human sense of Jesus crucified." It is this same Jesus the Christ to whom Mrs. Eddy refers so often throughout her writings; and to whom she constantly points as the wayshower and the mediator,—"that life-link forming the connection through which the real reaches the unreal, Soul rebukes sense, and Truth destroys error;" and again: "As the individual ideal of Truth, Christ Jesus came to rebuke rabbinical error and all sin, sickness, and death,—to point out the way of Truth and Life" ( Science and Health, pp. 350, 30). Let us note the word "individual." It holds our thought to that individual entity which constitutes the Redeemer, and does not lead us away toward an impersonal and mayhap intangible concept of Christ. Science and Health is replete with references to Christ Jesus. On nearly every page attention is drawn to him. The name Jesus occurs upward of five hundred times in the book, to say nothing of the numerous other synonyms expressing his nature, character, and office. How essential, then, that we should be ever alert to the place he occupies in the divine plan. We should carefully avoid displacing him either in history or in our own consciousness; and in our expressions of gratitude for what Christian Science has done and is doing for the world and for us, his nature, character, and office, nay, his unique place in God's government, should never be overlooked or forgotten. If we clearly understand and duly regard the Scriptural saying, "And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent," we shall not lose sight of his place, for this Scripture so plainly conjoins the Father and the Son that there is no mistaking its meaning. It is well to notice too that Christ Jesus is here speaking of himself and defining his relation to God. Therefore if we were to say, "And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God," leaving out the remainder of the passage, we would not be stating the whole truth or defining the wholeness of God and His idea. Had it not come to pass that the Son appeared as the mediator and the wayshower, the world would have been minus that great revelation which constitutes the basis of the true Christian religion, and hence we should not have had the revelation contained in the writings of our Leader, nor the example of her exalted Christian life and the infinite blessings which are ours as the result of her consecrated labor in opening to our vision a conception and understanding of the Scriptures such as we had never before been privileged to know. Let us therefore increasingly study the life and character of the great Wayshower, until "we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ."
Christian Science Sentinel, April 1, 1916 |
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