After finding that the young man, spoken of in the gospel according to Matthew, knew and kept the commandments, Jesus gave an answer to his question which was fraught with a meaning which only becomes clear to humanity when it really is seeking to understand and express the Christ, Truth, in a love that is patterned after the divine. "Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me." According to this same account the young man was sorrowful, and departed, evidently feeling himself unable to give up his material possessions, or the belief of life in matter, in order to follow the Christ, Truth, which would lead him to that spiritual consciousness which is Spirit, Life eternal. It is not until one has made a study of Christian Science that the full import of Jesus' remark which followed this occurrence comes home to one with its deep significance. For Jesus said, "And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." To one loaded with riches conditions seem to be comfortable and satisfactory. As Mrs. Eddy says on page 85 of "Miscellaneous Writings": "The pleasures—more than the pains—of sense, retard regeneration; for pain compels human consciousness to escape from sense into the immortality and harmony of Soul. Disease in error, more than ease in it, tends to destroy error: the sick often are thereby led to Christ, Truth, and to learn their way out of both sickness and sin." So it is that until one learns to look upon the desire for material possessions, whether wealth, position, fame, power, or what not, as the tempter and the tempted, the Judas in human consciousness, one has not really begun the battle which all must fight between the flesh and the Spirit, in order that the kingdom of heaven, peace and harmony, may be attained.

The story of Judas Iscariot's betrayal of Jesus the Christ for thirty pieces of silver is constantly being repeated in human history. Judas was but the tool of supposititious evil aiming its blow, through him, at the Christ, the Truth, which the pure and inspired Jesus exemplified and taught. Every temptation which comes to a mortal to renounce his ideals, his highest sense of good, for material gain or profit, is the same quality of thought that Judas represented when for thirty pieces of silver he forswore the Christ. Many times daily has one to choose between his ideals, the dictates of his conscience, and what seems to him the easy, agreeable, or materially profitable way. This choice means always the same thing, the choice between the temptation of ease in matter, the belief of life in matter, or what to human sense appears quite intangible, spiritual unfoldment, or the kingdom of God. For this warfare is against the serpent, or impersonal evil, as Mary Baker Eddy puts it so succinctly in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures"(p. 564): "The serpent is perpetually close upon the heel of harmony. From the beginning to the end, the serpent pursues with hatred the spiritual idea." After the student of Christian Science realizes that his choice must always be on the side of right, on the basis of divine Principle, and he knows what is right because it is in reality constructive, he prays each day to be delivered from all evil, from temptation; in other words, from being made to neglect his duty to Principle. He recognizes his inseparability from divine Principle which guides him and guards him from the temptation of believing in any life apart from God, good, or from being mesmerized into a belief of life in matter.

Had Judas fully understood the teachings of the Master, he could not have been tempted through his envy and jealousy of Jesus' spiritual power, nor would the expectation of material gain have held out any inducement for his betrayal of Jesus. Were it not for the fear of extinction and oblivion humanity would not be guilty to-day of bloodshed, of unscrupulous business dealings, of the underhand methods in national and international relations as well as in almost every human relationship. It is not until the light of Christian Science is thrown on the Bible, and a key is furnished to the Scriptures through the study of Science and Health that it is learned that the pearl without price is the understanding that because all life is of and in God, it is indestructible and therefore there is no extermination to fear. Because the Scriptures say, "But rather seek ye the kingdom of God; and all these things shall be added unto you," a state of being is constantly sought which expresses the one Mind which is God, and in so doing the student realizes that all that he needs he already has through his perfect relation to the one supply which is Mind. Seeing that accretion really gets him nothing, and desiring to express constantly more of that Mind which was also in Christ Jesus, he does not attempt through mere human will to escape experience. He learns to pray, "Not my will, but thine, be done," knowing that the only experience he can be called upon to go through is the experience of good, and in it there is sure to be spiritual unfoldment and growth.