Article August 5, 1916 Issue

Importance of a Right Standpoint

FRANK H. SPRAGUE

So accustomed are mankind to accepting without question the testimony of the physical senses, that many an inquirer, when confronted with the truth revealed in Christian Science, is moved to exclaim like Nicodemus, "How can these things be?"

Recognizing in the mighty works of Jesus the credentials of a prophet, Nicodemus no doubt thought to supplement his store of rabbinical knowledge by inquiring into the Master's teaching. How great was his astonishment, therefore, when our Lord, instead of proceeding to expound some new doctrine, advanced a point of view which upset the basis not alone of Judaic interpretations but of all material rationality,—"That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." In other words, the carnal type of thought and material rationale of existence have nothing in common with things spiritual.

If, as Jesus declared on another occasion, "God is a Spirit," it follows that His kingdom, that which emanates from Him and is embraced within the divine consciousness, must be like Himself in quality; that is, it must be spiritual. Whence, then, comes "the flesh,"—matter, mortality, evil, error? Of what is it "born"? It would almost seem that the very simplicity and directness of the Master's answer to the question in this colloquy had led men to overlook the point which he brought home with such force to the "man of the Pharisees,"—"Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God."

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