Article September 6, 1919 Issue

Man's authority is derived from God, from Principle,...

The Christian Science Monitor

Man's authority is derived from God, from Principle, and from no other or lesser quarter. The authority of the individual is the result of his understanding of Principle, of his living in accordance with Principle, and of his demonstration of Principle. Pilate discovered that when he boasted to Christ Jesus of his authority, and recognized its limitations in the roar of the despised rabble outside his doors, "Thou art not Cæsar's friend." Cæsar himself realized how little it all meant when he hid himself from his assassins, in the curtains of his window. The authority of Cæsar, the authority of Pilate, then, was nothing but the simulated authority of the human mind, the counterfeit of the only true authority, which is divine. Neither Cæsar nor Pilate had ever dreamed of the authority which said to the blind man, See, and to the deaf man, Hear, which ordered the storm to cease and the dead to come forth from the tomb.

Cæsar and Pilate were of the earth earthy, as has been every Cæsar from Augustus to Napoleon, and every Pilate from Pontius to Warren Hastings. True authority comes from unknowing every thing which has ever been most real to Cæsar and his pro-consuls. It is born, in the human consciousness, in repudiating matter for Spirit, and deserting the footsteps of Cæsar for the footsteps of the Christ, as is made absolutely clear by Mrs. Eddy, in a well-known passage on page 14 of Science and Health: "Entirely separate from the belief and dream of material living, is the Life divine, revealing spiritual understanding and the consciousness of man's dominion over the whole earth. This understanding casts out error and heals the sick, and with it you can speak 'as one having authority.'"

To understand the full significance of this it must be remembered that the common people who had followed Christ Jesus "from Galilee, and from Decapolis, and from Jerusalem, and from Judæa, and from beyond Jordan," brought with them their sick, all who "were taken with divers diseases and torments, and those which were possessed with devils, and those which were lunatick, and those that had the palsy." All these Jesus healed. And it was because he demonstrated the truth of his teaching through his healing, that the people recognized the power of his doctrine, and declared that 'he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes."

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