Article August 13, 1910 Issue

What then did Jesus teach? Simply that the only power...

Frederick Dixon

Occult Review

What then did Jesus teach? Simply that the only power was God, good, and that as soon as this fact was grasped, spiritual causation would begin to be understood, and as soon as it was understood, men would begin to get that understanding of the absolute which constitutes the truth, the knowledge of which, he said, would free mankind. Had Jesus stopped here, merely contenting himself with the statement of a theory, Christianity would never have gained the power it has. He knew, however, that absolute truth was the most scientific thing in the world, and that, because it was scientific, it could be demonstrated.

"Jesus of Nazareth," writes Mrs. Eddy, on page 313 of Science and Health, "was the most scientific man that ever trod the globe. He plunged beneath the material surface of things, and found the spiritual cause." Knowing that God, good, is the cause of all that truly exists, he was able to do more than preach a theory to his listeners, he was able to demonstrate Science. He came preaching amid the Galilean hills and in the Jordan valley the gospel or good news of the omnipotence of divine Principle, and when the material instincts of his listeners shrank from the very spirituality of his message, he fell back on the miracle, declaring that if they could not believe for the words' sake, they must believe for the very works' sake. In this way he made the power of working miracles the demonstration of what is described in the epistles as the epignosis tou theou, the full, exact, that is to say, scientific knowledge of God, and so of Truth.

Now, neither of the words translated miracle in the New Testament has, or ever has had, any supernatural significance. They mean simply an act of power or a sign. The miracles of Jesus were acts of power to the shepherds and fishermen of Palestine, inasmuch as they revealed the law of spiritual causation, and they were, moreover, a sign that the gospel of Christ was no mere theory, but an absolute, demonstrable, scientific religion. "He," Jesus said, "that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also." In these words he made the power to demonstrate the truth which makes men free the proof of a man's knowledge of the Christian faith.

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