Article October 21, 1922 Issue

Fruitage

MARY HELENE CONANT

Our Master said, "He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also." Every one knows how Jesus went about healing the sick, saving sinners, and raising the dead. These works of the Master are being repeated, in some degree, by Christian Scientists throughout the world to-day. However, the healings which came through the ministry of the Christ were not the entire mission of Jesus. What greater work did the Master accomplish than to leave us his example of love forgiving its enemies? The whole life of Jesus the Christ was a life of love. Before his time, the Jews had believed in revenge and hatred; but Jesus brought to the world the gospel of loving.

The Jews doubted the feasibility of divine Love. The entire mission of Jesus was to prove to them the power of Love, and to demonstrate its practicality in daily reflecting good, showing that by living a life of love, one could even triumph over death. His greatest work was his living the life of love; and the healing of the sick followed as a natural consequence. On page 204 of "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany," Mrs. Eddy says in part, "Hypnotism, and the resenting of injuries, are not the fruits of Christian Science, while returning good for evil, loving one's enemies, and overcoming evil with good,—these are its fruits; and its therapeutics, based as aforetime on this divine Principle, heals all disease."

Jesus left a rule by which we can know who are Christians, or followers of the Christ. He did not say merely, If ye heal many people, ye are my disciples. Jesus said, "By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another." So, it is how much we love, which determines whether or not we are Christians. To love our brother means never to condemn, judge, or criticize him erroneously. It means to uphold the real man in our thought, and to see only that man, notwithstanding material evidence. It means never to bear false witness; never to believe that there is a man that is not of God. It means to forgive those who may seemingly have wronged us, and forget, through the understanding of the allness of good and the unreality of evil, that the offense ever seemed to occur; and then act accordingly. Mrs. Eddy has also given us a rule whereby we may know if we are real Christian Scientists. She says in her Message for 1902 (p. 8): "The spiritually minded are inspired with tenderness, Truth, and Love. The life of Christ Jesus, his words and his deeds, demonstrate Love. We have no evidence of being Christian Scientists except we possess this inspiration, and its power to heal and to save."

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