Editorial April 16, 1927 Issue

"If I be lifted up"

Albert F. Gilmore

Jesus ' words often fell upon deaf ears. So buried in the depths of materiality were the masses of the people of that day that often they failed to grasp the tremendous significance of his precepts, or to understand the implication of his healing works. He was the exemplar of the truth of his own saying, "A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country, and in his own house." In view of this condition, it is easily understood why there was so little comprehension of some of his more important parables. His assertion, "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me," failed of comprehension; for immediately his auditors began to argue with him about the Son of man, declaring that the law stated that the Christ abides forever.

Christian Science makes perfectly clear that the lifting up of the Christ in the hearts of men is the only means whereby they win their way out of material bondage into the glorious liberty of the children of light. Only by freeing thought from its erroneous beliefs, only by exchanging material concepts of life for spiritual truth, is the Christ lifted up. In the crucifixion, it appeared that Jesus was overcome by the hatred of his persecutors. In his resurrection he became the greatest of conquerors. "He won eternal honors," writes Mrs. Eddy in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 39). "He overcame the world, the flesh, and all error, thus proving their nothingness. He wrought a full salvation from sin, sickness, and death." What a complete triumph was his over every material law, over all which seems to bind and limit mortals.

So effectually did Jesus lift up the Christ, Truth, that he overcame even the "last enemy," one of the most generally accepted of erroneous beliefs. He proved for all succeeding generations of men that Spirit, not matter, is the divine inheritance of man, and that life is man's eternal state. Without the experience of the cross and the tomb, it seems that Jesus could never have become for mankind the Way-shower to eternal Life. These experiences, with all their poignancy, with all their attendant indignities, were the means whereby he gave the world its greatest object lesson, proving life to be indestructible and man to be spiritual.

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