Editorial April 22, 1916 Issue

"Risen with Christ"

Annie M. Knott

Christian Scientists are sometimes asked why their church does not observe "times and seasons" in the way that a good many other churches do, as, for instance, the Sunday called Easter. These questioners forget that St. Paul reproached the Galatians because they apparently did not grasp as they should the meaning of divine sonship, but instead clung to outward things, "the weak and beggarly elements" of mortal belief. He says, "Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years." In Article XVII of our Church Manual (Sect. 2) we are told that "there shall be no special observances, festivities, nor gifts at the Easter season by members of The Mother Church." Our Leader adds: "Those sacred words of our beloved Master, 'Let the dead bury their dead,' and 'Follow thou me,' appeal to daily Christian endeavors for the living whereby to exemplify our risen Lord."

Let no one think, however, that the Easter season means little to the Christian Scientist, who no longer observes it with outward ceremonial, but instead asks himself to what extent he has "risen with Christ" above earth and earthliness, consequently above doubt and fear. In his epistle to the Colossians Paul deals with this whole question in a daring and profoundly spiritual manner. He tells of the divine purpose to reveal to men that which has seemed to be a mystery, hid from the ages but made known through Christ Jesus, and he says that "the riches of the glory of this mystery" is "Christ in you, the hope of glory." The apostle then calls for faith in "the operation of God," who raised Jesus from the dead. To the Christian Scientist this does not mean faith to believe that God did so, for this is accepted by him without question, but faith in the operation of the same divine law at the present hour and in his own experience, the unfolding faith which lifts one above sin, sickness, and the fear of death.

To those in a sense of sadness or suffering at the Easter season this Pauline message tells of a new and wonderful sense of life, not to be gained from anything material, but which comes from being "quickened together with him,"—with Christ. Nature lovers point us to the revival of plant life in the springtime, but the plant is the same as that which had appeared in meadow or garden the year before. Not so, however, with the one who has died to materiality by learning its nothingness, and who has "put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him." The one who is "risen with Christ" is daily renewed in knowledge, the kind of knowledge which is power.

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