Editorial March 11, 1911 Issue

"THE POWER OF AN ENDLESS LIFE."

John B. Willis

In exalting the priesthood of Christ Jesus, the writer of the epistle to the Hebrews notes its superiority to every ecclesiastical or hereditary rank and authority, in that it manifests "the power of an endless life." Our Lord's startling self-assertions, as for instance when he said, "No man cometh unto the Father, but by me," etc., find their only explanation in his conscious manifestation of the Life that is eternal. It was because in humility he dared to be true to Truth, that he was not presumptuous. Here as elsewhere the teaching of Christian Science is identified with the teaching of the Master, for it insists that the spiritual priesthood to which all believers are called is constituted and made effective in the clearness and continuity of spiritual identification with "an endless life."

The sense of life that is linked to materiality can but be hedged about with limitations. We recognize the supremacy of the power of thought, of conscious life over all material forces, for we see men bringing these forces into subjection. Standing upon the bridge of his huge vessel, the captain's conscious command over the steam and electricity generated below, enables him to face a gale of wind and a ragins sea with calm assurance that, regardless of their fierce buffetings, he will reach his port at the scheduled time. And yet how brief is his sovereignty and how absolutely different from that of the Master when he spake to the waves and they obeyed him! One has exercised the authority of human knowledge, the other gave expression to "the power of an endless life." One has vantaged by the wisdom of this world, the other by "the wisdom that is from above."

Regardless of our Lord's explicit teaching of the at-one-ment of God and man, Christian believers have always drawn back at the suggestion of the possibility of doing the Master's works, as he did them; and the teaching of Christian Science is an offense to many today because it is thought to be blasphemously presumptuous, as indulging an utterly unwarranted egotism. This characteristic Christian reserve is both explicable and legitimate from the point of view of those who identify man with mortals, but when God's man is known for what he is,—wholly spiritual,—the naturalness of his Christlike priesthood, and of his utilization of the power of "the living and true God"—becomes apparent.

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