Article March 16, 1907 Issue

"LEAD THOU ME ON"

W. PETCH

Sometimes I think one is too much inclined to look at the life of Jesus as though it had all been comprised in the three glorious years of his public ministry. We rightly hold them as ideal, but we are apt to forget or overlook the preparation for those years. Students of Christian Science would like to reach at once the heights and depths of its meaning; the beginner is impatient of delays, and of his own slowness in proving the truth; but later on there comes to each of us a more sober stage, when we begin to realize that only "goodness attains the demonstration of Truth" (Science and Health, p. 2). then we see that we must seek goodness first if we would find the right way towards the source of all good—God. Sometimes when the way seems long and we are tempted to be weary because of the many burdens that seemingly must be carried along the road, we may well stop and think over Jesus' thirty years of preparation for his mission of teaching and healing.

Mrs. Eddy's words have many times cheered and comforted me. She writes. "Three years, he went about doing good. He had for thirty years been preparing to heal and teach divinely; but his three–years mission was a marvel of glory: ... Only three years a personal Saviour! yet, the foundations he laid are as eternal as Truth, the chief corner–stone" (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 163). This has helped me to be patient, and it will help us all. If we know that we are working well and honestly; if we are confident of God; if we are learning day by day to practise more perfect obedience to the divine Principle of being, surely in God's own time we will be ready to heal quickly when called upon for help. Even now the purification of our own thoughts and the spiritualization of our own lives—in seeking and finding the ideal manhood and womanhood—is pointing the way for others more wonderfully than we ourselves can tell. Our Leader says in the article already quoted. "This spiritual idea, or Christ, entered into the minutiae of the life of the personal Jesus. It made him an honest man, a good carpenter, and a good man, before it could make him the glorified" (Ibid., p. 166). What could be more simple than these words?

What we each need and should desire most of all is to be made good—Godlike—in whatever state we are, be it that of carpenter or king; and this is what we must attain before we can become qualified to teach and heal as did Jesus. Let us think of those thirty years, according to human sense, and will we not be patient? Then let us think of those thirty years, according to spiritual consciousness, in which "one day is with the Lord as a thousand years," and will not this inspire us to be active, that we too may reach this glorified understanding? Patience and activity, hand in hand, guide us onward to the realization of that perfect Truth which must fit us—aye, compel us—to fulfil the Christ-mission for which we long.

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