Article September 29, 1917 Issue

It would be difficult more perfectly to state the secret...

The Christian Science Monitor

It would be difficult more perfectly to state the secret of Christ Jesus' power than did the chief priests when they said of him, "He trusted in God;" nor could words, contemptuously spoken as these were, better expose the materialism of the carnal mind, which it was the purpose of Jesus' trust in God to destroy but which the priests had no intention of surrendering. The priests claimed that they themselves trusted in God, as many mortals since their time have also claimed. The difference, how-ever, between their conventionalized worship of a national deity and Jesus' scientific trust in the divine Principle which he understood, was measured by Jesus' success in destroying those very illusions of sensuous existence in matter which to the materialists were solid reality.

Trust in God today, as in Jesus' time, can mean nothing but the conscious turning away from the testimony of the material senses to reliance upon the evidence of spiritual reality. It was this reversal of material order which made Jesus the Christ the hated of materialists, who felt the rebuke of his spirituality but were unwilling to part with their materialism. It is just this unwillingness of the human mind to lay down the desires of the material senses that prolongs the suffering of those senses.

The persistence of humanity's trust in matter, in the face of continual disappointments due to the failure of the thing trusted in, can only be explained by the human mind's ignorance of Spirit. This false trust in material power or promise is the lie about a quality of mind, a characteristic of the real consciousness, which reflects God, and which therefore naturally relies upon Spirit and upon nothing else. As this genuine trust in God penetrates human beliefs, fears are dispelled, and a man consciously receives the immediate reward of peace commensurate with his singleness of confidence. The prophet Isaiah referred to this quality of spiritual reliance and its effect when he said, "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee."

Enjoy 1 free Sentinel article or audio program each month, including content from 1898 to today.

Send a comment to the editors
NEXT IN THIS ISSUE
Article
In view of The Berkshire Gleaner's review of Mark Twain's...
September 29, 1917
Contents

We'd love to hear from you!

Easily submit your testimonies, articles, and poems online.

Submit