Article November 13, 1915 Issue

Jesus said to his disciples, "It is expedient for you that...

Robert S. Ross—Lancaster, N. Y.

Western New York Post

Jesus said to his disciples, "It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you." He meant, of course, that they should look away from his personality, which would not always be with them, to divine Principle, God, which would always be at hand to be understood and demonstrated. On pages 332-334 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mrs. Eddy makes a clear and logical distinction between Jesus and the Christ. If our critic is willing to accept the teaching that God, Spirit, is omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient, then he will doubtless be willing to admit that matter—the opposite of Spirit, God—is nothing, the testimony of the so-called material sense notwithstanding. Spirit, God, is All, or He is not. If He were not All, then a division of power would exist and God as the All-in-all would be a myth.

Jesus knew that human existence was not the reality of being; hence his statement, "If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true." He also said: "Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it." Jesus was continually refuting and overturning the false claims of matter and material law. He healed those who were condemned to incurability, raised those admitted to be dead, changed the water into wine, walked on water, and fed the multitudes,—all through his understanding of the falsity of sense-evidence and the reality and ever presence of divine Truth, Life, Love.

Jesus not only proved for others that the testimony of the material senses does not constitute the truth of being, but he proved it for himself by displacing human belief with spiritual understanding until a true idea took the place of every false belief in his consciousness. Jesus knew that the human body and material existence were but subjective states of human belief. In the process of material elimination popularly known as the ascension, Jesus did not leave his body behind him, neither did he take it with him; it simply gave place to an understanding of his true selfhood. This exact, scientific thinking enabled the physical Jesus to be translated into the spiritual Christ.

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