|
CSEC ON-LINE REFERENCE LIBRARY |
|
MARY BAKER EDDY
The miracles recorded in the Scriptures illustrate the life of Jesus as nothing else can; but they cost him the hatred of the rabbis. The rulers sought the life of Jesus; they would extinguish whatever denied and defied their superstition. We learn somewhat of the qualities of the divine Mind through the human Jesus. The power of his transcendent goodness is manifest in the control it gave him over the qualities opposed to Spirit which mortals name matter. The Principle of these marvellous works is divine; but the actor was human. This divine Principle is discerned in Christian Science, as we advance in the spiritual understanding that all substance, Life, and intelligence are God. The so-called miracles contained in Holy Writ are neither supernatural nor preternatural; for God is good, and goodness is more natural than evil. The marvellous healing-power of goodness is the outflowing life of Christianity, and it characterized and dated the Christian era. It was the consummate naturalness of Truth in the mind of Jesus, that made his healing easy and instantaneous. Jesus regarded good as the normal state of man, and evil as the abnormal; holiness, life, and health as the better representatives of God than sin, disease, and death. The master Metaphysician understood omnipotence to be All-power: because Spirit was to him All-in-all, matter was palpably an error of premise and conclusion, while God was the only substance, Life, and intelligence of man. The apostle Paul insists on the rare rule in Christian Science that we have chosen for a text; a rule that is susceptible of proof, and is applicable to every stage and state of human existence. The divine Science of this rule is quite as remote from the general comprehension of mankind as are the so-called miracles of our Master, and for the sole reason that it is their basis. The foundational facts of Christian Science are gathered from the supremacy of spiritual law and its antagonism to every supposed material law. Christians to-day should be able to say, with the sweet sincerity of the apostle, "I take pleasure in infirmities," — I enjoy the touch of weakness, pain, and all suffering of the flesh, because it compels me to seek the remedy for it, and to find happiness, apart from the personal senses. The holy calm of Paul's well-tried hope met no obstacle or circumstances paramount to the triumph of a reasonable faith in the omnipotence of good, involved in its divine Principle, God: the so-called pains and pleasures of matter were alike unreal to Jesus; for he regarded matter as only a vagary of mortal belief, and subdued it with this understanding. The abstract statement that all is Mind, supports the entire wisdom of the text; and this statement receives the mortal scoff only because it meets the immortal demands of Truth. The Science of Paul's declaration resolves the element misnamed matter into its original sin, or human will; that will which would oppose bringing the qualities of Spirit into subjection to Spirit. Sin brought death; and death is an element of matter, or material falsity, never of Spirit. When Jesus reproduced his body after its burial, he revealed the myth or material falsity of evil; its powerlessness to destroy good, and the omnipotence of the Mind that knows this: he also showed forth the error and nothingness of supposed life in matter, and the great somethingness of the good we possess, which is of Spirit, and immortal. Understanding this, Paul took pleasure in infirmities, for it enabled him to triumph over them, — he declared that "the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death;" he took pleasure in "reproaches" and "persecutions," because they were so many proofs that he had wrought the problem of being beyond the common apprehension of sinners; he took pleasure in "necessities," for they tested and developed latent power. We protect our dwellings more securely after a robbery, and our jewels have been stolen; so, after losing those jewels of character, — temperance, virtue, and truth, — the young man is awakened to bar his door against further robberies. Go to the bedside of pain, and there you can demonstrate the triumph of good that has pleasure in infirmities; because it illustrates through the flesh the divine power of Spirit, and reaches the basis of all supposed miracles; whereby the sweet harmonies of Christian Science are found to correct the discords of sense, and to lift man's being into the sunlight of Soul. Is privileged beyond the walks of common life, Quite on the verge of heaven."
by Mary Baker Eddy, pp. 199-202 |
Copyright
© 1996-2004 CSEC