"Lifted up"

ELMER ELLSWORTH CAIN

In the twelfth chapter of John's Gospel are found these words of our Master: "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me." This thought expressed by Jesus certainly shows the powerful attraction of the Christ, Truth. If, therefore, we lift our thoughts away from the earthly to the contemplation of spiritual things, our light will be seen of men, and they will be attracted to God, or good. Then we shall be found obeying the heavenly command to go into all the world and preach the gospel to all mankind.

Many weary ones are struggling to carry the heavy burden of sickness, lack, or sorrow of some kind, and they press feebly onward, searching, ever searching, for health, peace, and rest amid the arid surroundings of the desert of material existence, little realizing that if they but lifted their thoughts from a material to a spiritual sense of life, they would find God and all of His attributes, including peace, health, joy, power, and an abundance of all good. Through earnest study of Christian Science, the Christ, Truth, is revealed, and one may thereby partake freely of the living waters of life and be lifted up. Then his burden will be removed.

Jesus must have kept his thoughts constantly lifted up, or else he could not have demonstrated life, truth, and love as perfectly as he did. He saw only the real man as the spiritual expression of infinite Love. He saw only spiritual Life, realizing at all times that this Life is the eternal God, changeless, without beginning and without ending. He saw only the truth of Spirit, and knew that mortality and matter were but the suppositional opposites of reality; and he demonstrated the power of Love to heal all manner of sickness and all manner of sin. In the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," our beloved Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, says on page 259, "The divine nature was best expressed in Christ Jesus, who threw upon mortals the truer reflection of God and lifted their lives higher than their poor thought-models would allow,—thoughts which presented man as fallen, sick, sinning, and dying."

It is recorded in one of the Gospels that Christ Jesus walked on the water, a feat in direct opposition to so-called material law. This could never have been accomplished had he not lifted up his thoughts far above the corporeal Jesus to a conscious realization of his spiritual selfhood and unity with God. In proportion as we lift our thought above the material sense of creation to the spiritual, we too walk with Christ on the waters of mortal thought over "the dark ebbing and flowing tides of human fear" (Science and Health, p. 566). To do this we must strive through constant study of the Bible and our textbook to gain an understanding of the absolute truth taught in Christian Science about God and man's relation to Him. Then we can emulate the example our Master set us, and learn to love our neighbor as ourselves. We shall learn also to love even those who persecute us, ever remembering the compassionate love and forgiveness of the beloved Master, who, when on the cross, was able to lift his thought to his Father in heaven, and pray, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do."

After his marvelous victory over the beliefs of evil, Jesus stepped from the tomb, having accomplished the stupendous demonstration of rising above the "last enemy"—death. And, finally, at the ascension, he was lifted above the comprehension of his disciples and disappeared from their midst, having overcome all sense of matter as real.

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