Resurrection NELLIE B. MACE          For centuries, Christians have celebrated, at the annual Easter season, the resurrection of Christ Jesus from the grave. What this stupendous miracle has meant to human hearts could be described only by depicting the endless beliefs and hopes and superstitions attaching to the event. All agree, however, on the important point that Jesus' conquest of the belief of death is vitally connected with humanity's hope of salvation. Yet, even many of those who have been most sincerely convinced that Christians should follow the great Exemplar, have not clearly seen how the resurrection can be a practical help in daily problems; and so, history's supreme event has been widely regarded as a sign of vicarious redemption.          Christ Jesus repeatedly declared himself "the way," "the resurrection, and the life," demanding that his followers should emulate him in all respects, doing, eventually, as he said they should do, "greater works" than those he had himself performed. It is the practical, ever operative power of the living Christ, Truth, which alone can make Jesus' teachings of avail to humanity. This view, which Christian Science presents, is emphasized in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 292), where Mrs. Eddy says, "Truth will be to us 'the resurrection and the life' only as it destroys all error and the belief that Mind, the only immortality of man, can be fettered by the body, and Life be controlled by death."          It is to be remembered that Jesus' resurrection from the experience of death came as the culmination of an unparalleled succession of triumphs over what had seemed to men insurmountable material conditions. His mission was to reveal God to men. Spiritually endowed above all others, he perceived what the coming of the Christ to the flesh would effect; and he proceeded to prove in all points, and step by step, the presence and the power of the divine manifestation of God. He was to prove that Life, Truth, and Love overcome sin, disease, and death, to show that because God is All, there is no actual material existence. Jesus spent three years in making plain what was eternally the unchanging truth of being, and left his example to be followed in humanity's great need to rise above and overcome all false sense of materiality.          It is not to be supposed that Jesus entered upon his brief and illustrious ministry without due preparation. During the thirty years which preceded his public work, he was engaged in quiet, everyday relationships and tasks, such as are common to mankind. It is but reasonable to conclude that in all the little ways of human associations he was correcting mistaken concepts, and ever gaining a greater understanding of the true spiritual idea, which mortal sense claims to pervert. It must have been that in these minor, unheralded ways of daily work, of meditation, of conversation with his mother, of contact with his companions in Nazareth, Jesus was also communing with and proving God, and detaching spiritual concepts from the grasp of mortal belief. It was, therefore, as a mature thinker, assured of the truth he was to demonstrate, that he emerged from his obscurity, ready to receive his initiatory baptism, and, henceforth, to bring to every point of tangency with humanity the power of the resurrection. Every human concept or relationship that felt the touch of his spiritual understanding was uplifted from its burial in material belief into some better apprehension of immortal spiritual ideas; or, to put it in another way, — at every touch of the healing Christ, or Truth, mortal beliefs fell away, leaving spiritual reality more appreciably manifest.          The fundamental error of existence is the belief in a parentage other than God, divine Mind. From this false belief in a mortal origin arise all other false beliefs about human relationships; and within the limits of these illusions circle all the temporal wants and woes of mortal sense; while death, the climax of the phantasm, is but the extreme of the belief that life begins materially. Thus it is seen that the entire concept of material relationship must give place, through the understanding of the Christ, to the perception of the perfect spiritual relationship between the divine Mind and its idea. The work of the Christ, in coming to the flesh, is to destroy all evil; and Christian Science teaches that this is done by resurrecting true concepts from this supposititious burial in materiality, and thus finally ending the belief in death by ending the supposition that any right idea or relationship can be materialized.          It may be significant that Jesus' first public miracle was performed at a marriage feast, and also that early in his career the power of the Christ was manifested in the little city of Nain, where a widow mourned, believing that the star of her hope had set because, as it seemed to her, she had lost both husband and son. The youth, having believed in the reality of mortal parentage, had believed, as a consequence, that sweet ambitions and buoyant expectancy could be cut short and subordinated to death. Surely this dear relationship of mother and son, this union of filial support and maternal joy, was a concept which, wrested from the grasp of mortal belief and based upon divine Principle, would be found to be immortal. How truly prepared Jesus was to heal this sense of severed relationship is seen in his own spiritual attitude. He refused recognition to any fatherhood but that of God; and he declared that all who do the Father's will are his brother and sister and mother.          In this understanding of spiritual reality, how immortal became the true sense of relationship which Jesus reflected, and which has come down through the ages to inspire each individual heart that longs for union with divine Love! Was it not thus that Jesus, understanding the truth of being, bade the young man in Nain arise, restoring him to his mother and proving the spiritual origin and deathless sonship of the real man? In the raising of Jairus' daughter and in the resurrection of Lazarus, Jesus also proved the holy harmony of present immortal being.          When Jesus had thus proved for others the deathless reality of Life, healing along the way all manner of disease and discord, as incidental to the one fundamental error of belief in existence apart from God, his unequaled demonstration, in his own experience, over the belief of life in matter crowned his earthly career. Of what practical import to Christians today are these marvelous examples of the Way-shower? To all of his followers he said, "He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also." Human sense is humbled in contemplation of the resurrection morn. But all may remember with grateful joy the later words of the Master concerning the Christ, "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world;" for in this assurance the profound significance of the succession of demonstrations which culminated in Jesus' resurrection is revealed. In gaining an understanding of the continual presence of the Christ, all may begin immediately to avail themselves of the deathless reality of spiritual man, which Jesus proved in his progressive conquest over mortal belief.          Thus it is that in all the quiet and obscure ways of daily living, the ever present Christ, Truth, may be received into the understanding, and human concepts lifted from a material to a spiritual basis. In each consciousness, thought may respond to the call of the Christ to arise from false dependence upon material sense. Strength and eagerness to achieve may, through reliance on spiritual reality, be released from the belief in finiteness and governed through a demonstrable understanding of the truth. The sweetest and tenderest of human loves, subordinated to this holy influence, may be not only purified and spiritualized, but also protected from destructive beliefs. Indeed, all true qualities of thought, seen in the light of this truth, begin to unfold in their immortal nature as spiritual ideas.          One need not be disheartened because the entire spiritualization of thought is not accomplished with one effort, or because the whole course out of a false sense of existence is not run in a few years, as in the case of the Nazarene. Day after day, year after year, the discipline of subordinating the material to the spiritual must go on toward the ultimate proof of spiritual man, in the likeness of God. It should be remembered, however, that time does not enter into God's work, and that it is of value to mortals only as it is improved in this preparative process. Human sense may lament many times because of failure immediately to realize the power of the ever present Christ. But again and again, in every circumstance, divine Love will speak the needed uplifting message to receptive thought; false sense will yield, and God be glorified, because the allness of divine Life is the only fact of existence.          For these reasons, each one who is endeavoring to follow the Christ, Truth, may profitably ask himself whether, in all the little ways involving some one or more of the human relationships, he has begun to discipline himself, as did Jesus in Nazareth. Has one been a faithful, spiritually-minded toiler in the commonplace daily tasks? Has one reflected the Christ in the carpenter's shop, in the office, in the factory, in the household? Has one spiritualized and uplifted his concept of mother, father, son, daughter, brother, sister, friend, from submergence in finite sense to an understanding of true, divine relationships in their immortal unity, as Mind and idea? Has one, in numberless and nameless ways, exchanged false material beliefs for the true idea? Is all of one's contemplation redolent of the Christly spirit? It is, surely, in this meaning of continuous rising above the false sense of life in matter that Mrs. Eddy defines "resurrection," on page 593 of Science and Health, as "spiritualization of thought; a new and higher idea of immortality, or spiritual existence; material belief yielding to spiritual understanding."          What can one understand, even in the least, of the self-conquest, the patience, the forbearance, the tenderness, the ineffable love concentrated in the resurrection morn, until he has himself begun to practice in some measure, in his daily living, the sacrifice of self and sense? It is because of this necessarily progressive and cumulative proof of the ever-presence of the Christ that Christian Scientists understand Easter to be, not a special season, but a continuous purification of thought, bringing the spiritual light of understanding, which dissolves every belief of life in matter, and thus heals all the wounded relationships of earth.          Before one has learned how perfectly to yield to this process, one may clash with error, temporarily believing it to be a stubborn reality; one may stumble and fall; but if one is faithful to the light already received, one will hear the sacred, life-giving words of the Christ, "Be of good cheer: it is I; be not afraid." And, too, through all these hallowing experiences, one will learn, as did Paul, to declare rejoicingly, "I die daily," because he will know that in parting from error he is rising with Christ in the spiritual understanding of immortal life. Grateful beyond measure for the light which has been thrown upon the efficacy of the resurrection, Christian Scientists echo the melody from Mrs. Eddy's anthem (Poems, p. 31); — "Prolong the strain 'Christ risen!' Sad          sense, annoy No more the peace of Soul's sweet          solitude! Deep loneness, tear-filled tones of distant          joy, Depart! Glad Easter glows with gratitude."   "Resurrection" by Nellie B. Mace The Christian Science Journal, April, 1925

 

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