Article May 20, 1911 Issue

On that winter's day on which Christ Jesus made his historic...

Frederick Dixon

East Berks (Eng.) Gazette

On that winter's day on which Christ Jesus made his historic declaration to the Jews, as he walked in Solomon's porch, "I and the Father [not 'my Father'] are one" (Rev. Ver.), he laid claim for all men to their true spiritual sonship. It is this claim which forms the sustained thread of the sermon on the mount, and it is the exposure of selfishness in the opposite contention which is breathed through its alternate denunciations. This is the reason why the sermon on the mount has so often been described as transcendental and impractical. It is impractical to the man who believes that the image and likeness of God is a human being subject to sin, disease, and death; but the possibility of beginning to make it practical dawns on the human consciousness as it slowly realizes the distinction which Mrs. Eddy has drawn, on page 269 of Science and Health, between the human philosophy which has made God manlike, and Christian Science which makes man Godlike.

Christian Science, in making man Godlike, shows that the image and likeness of God is the spiritual man to whom Christ Jesus referred when he said, "I and the Father are one." It explains, therefore, what Christ Jesus himself meant by the command, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect," as well as Paul's admonition to the Philippians, "Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus." It is through the acquirement of spiritual knowledge, the knowledge of God, that man attains the Mind of Christ, and with it the understanding of his true relationship to God. Human philosophy, on the other hand, in making God manlike, would endow God with all the passions of a man. The inevitable result of this is the representation of a human being with a self apart from God, and governed by all the selfish passions which result from such a belief. It is precisely when a man realizes the distinction between the image and likeness of God and the Admic race, that he begins to be unselfish; that is to say, to deny himself utterly, and so to take up his cross and follow Christ.

This knowledge is the knowledge of the truth, the knowledge of that which absolutely is. As man, consequently, gains this knowledge, he gains that absolute or scientific knowledge of God, and so of Truth, which is referred to in the New Testament, in the epistles of Peter and of Paul, in a translated knowledge of God, but which should, of course, be translated full, exact, and so scientific, knowledge of God, and therefore of Truth. It is this knowledge which makes man free from all that is unlike God, for, in the exact proportion in which he acquires it, he surrenders his material selfhood, and begins to learn how to become perfect as his Father which is in heaven. It is the pursuit of this knowledge which constitutes the greatest love which a man can show for humanity. The apostle John has declared that "perfect love casteth out fear." Humanity is very conscious of its fear for those whom in its human, passionate way it loves, because it realizes that flesh and blood cannot enter the kingdom of heaven; because it realizes that flesh and blood can sin, suffer, and be sick. When it exchanges its human love for a true understanding of Love, it sees man no longer as a sinning, suffering human being, but as the image and likeness of God. In grasping this, it grasps something of the truth which makes men free, because it has acquired something of the perfect love which casts out fear. "Jesus," Mrs. Eddy writes, on page 476 of Science and Health, "beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals. In this perfect man the Saviour saw God's own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick."

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