Article April 19, 1924 Issue

The Ever Available Christ

ALFRED PITTMAN

The practical value of Christian Science is well illustrated by the understanding it has given of the Christ. To most Christians, Christ has been simply another name for Jesus. Not the name only, but all that it implied, all that constituted the great Prophet's anointment and made him so great as a healer and teacher, has been associated, for them, exclusively with his person. This has caused them to glorify him; but it has not enabled them to gain the help they required in the daily affairs of this world. If Jesus himself could have come to them in their difficulties, they would, possibly, have had no doubt of the results; but with Jesus away, the Christ has often seemed far off, and the way to it not clear. That has been the experience of millions of Christians.

Christian Science explains and shows how to prove the presence of the Christ; and it does this so simply that even the children understand. The Christ, which endowed Jesus with great power, Christian Science shows did not belong exclusively to him; and it brings out, also very plainly, that Jesus would have been the last to say that it did. Christian Science shows, further, that Jesus healed, not by anything that was true of him alone, but by what he saw to be true of all men as the children of God,—namely, that they were at-one with God, and therefore spiritual and perfect.

"Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals," says Mrs. Eddy in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (pp. 476, 477). "In this perfect man the Saviour saw God's own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick." This "correct view of man," which brought the truth to light in human experience, was the possession of all God's children, Jesus himself declared, in effect, repeatedly. Thus he said, "He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do." And again, "These signs shall follow them that believe"—not "you" but "them" that believe, that have this vision of the truth. The power that heals and saves, then, has not been lost in the Galilee of nineteen hundred years ago, nor even in a distant heaven. It is present with every one who does the will of God. The Christ, Truth, is ever present and ever available. How this knowledge helps each individual, and why Christian Scientists everywhere are continually giving thanks for it, is not hard to see. Take any common human difficulty: suppose some one has, in belief, an illness, or is worried about lack, or has work to do that seems beyond his ability. The root of his distress is not that man lacks capacity. He doubts man's capacity because he does not understand how to depend on the ever available Christ. When one is hard pressed in situations of this kind, what is there in ordinary human theories to lessen doubt? The philosophies, the material sciences, the so-called orthodox religious systems, are all alike in this: they offer little to keep him from believing, so far at least as this present world is concerned, that some power is capable of defeating his best efforts. In his crisis, when the relief of his doubt would do so much for him, there is not much, if anything, in these beliefs to relieve it, not much to assure him that he may understand how to express sufficiency.

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