Editorial February 19, 1910 Issue

"BEFORE ABRAHAM WAS, I AM."

John B. Willis

In Christian Science faith grows out of an understood Principle, while the world's philosophies and sciences have all begun with the phenomena of experience and reasoned therefrom. In very large measure Christian belief also has found its beginning not in a demonstrable apprehension of the spiritual meaning of Scripture statement, but in that literalism of verbal interpretation which has given birth to the many conflicting creeds of Christendom.

As defined in our text-book (p. 579), the term Abraham stands for "fidelity; faith in the divine Life," and when this meaning is substituted in Christ Jesus' declaration, "Verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am," the identity of the teaching of Christian Science with the teaching of Christ Jesus is made clear, and the significance of these words of the Master begins to grow apace for all who meditate upon them.

The unfoldment of truth in consciousness must follow that divine order which gives precedence to Principle, the eternal Truth upon which right thought never for one moment loses its hold. Says the psalmist, "Even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God," and this recognition of God and His idea as the all of being, and as wholly unaffected by the presentments and phenomena of material belief, is logically antecedent to true faith and its achievements. Thus Mrs. Eddy parallels Christ Jesus' exaltation of his Father as the explanation of all his works, with her declaration that "from the infinite One in Christian Science comes one Principle and its infinite idea, and with this infinitude come spiritual rules, laws, and their demonstration" (Science and Health, p. 112). A clear understanding that the spiritual realization which heals is a sequent of the perception and declaration of the truth of being, greatly illumines the way in Christian Science, since we may know that God is, that His right doing is constant and unfailing, quite regardless of human conditions: and our ability mentally to voice and maintain our position upon this "rock" remains, though everything else may seem intangible and beyond our grasp.

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