Editorial March 17, 1917 Issue

Acquaintance with the Scriptures

Annie M. Knott

In reading the gospels it is very interesting to note how thoroughly acquainted Christ Jesus was with the Scriptures of the Old Testament. What is more, it often happened that when he was confronted with what seemed very difficult problems, he answered his questioners, whether they were friendly inquirers or hostile critics, with some passage of Scripture which all the people claimed to accept. It is, moreover, deeply interesting to observe that he "plunged beneath the material surface of things, and found the spiritual cause," as Mrs. Eddy tells us on page 313 of Science and Health. In other words, he seldom took the accepted and usually material sense of the Scripture to which he referred, but found its spiritual and metaphysical meaning, and thus gave to every unbiased thinker a nobler outlook upon the human problem involved.

When the Sadducees came to ask him what he believed about the future life, and presented the case of a woman who had had seven husbands, he answered them by saying, "Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God." Now, there was nothing in the Old Testament which dealt specifically with such a case as the one presented, namely, which husband such a woman would have in the future life, and yet the Master held them firmly to the Scripture statement found in the third chapter of Exodus, and gave his own interpretation of it in these words: "He [God] is not a God of the dead, but of the living: for all live unto him." On many other occasions his profound acquaintance with the Scriptures furnished him with the needed defensive argument when he was assailed by the materialistic thought of those who claimed to be deeply religious people; and at one time he intimated that while they searched the Scriptures thinking that in them they would find eternal life, yet he added, "Ye will not come to me, that ye might have life."

This of course applies to the many today who claim to accept the Scriptures as a whole, especially the New Testament, and yet who refuse to seek life in the Christ way,—in the way which is not only pointed out all through Mrs. Eddy's teachings. but which has been found by unnumbered thousands as the way of health, holiness, and happiness, Nay more, how many are there outside of Christian Science who at all admit the only kind of life which the great Teacher presented, namely eternal life, the unbroken consciousness of being as the expression of God, forever with us, reflected in the immortal qualities of the Christ-idea.

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