Article September 17, 1927 Issue

"Let him deny himself"

JOHN ASHCROFT

The satisfied multitude had been sent upon its way. The twelve baskets had been filled with the fragments remaining after their hunger had been appeased, in further proof of the great Teacher's understanding of the immediate availability and exhaustless nature of all good. His interval of communion with the Father ended, the great demonstrator of Spirit's presence and power turned to his wondering disciples and asked, "Whom say the people that I am?" Dissatisfied with their answer, conscious of his own individuality and identity, unwilling to allow the misconceptions they had voiced to remain uncorrected, the Master followed his first question with a second: "But whom say ye that I am?" Peter's reply, "The Christ of God," marked a notable advance in human recognition of the truth of being; and it elicited from Jesus the utterance of one of Truth's greatest requirements in the furtherance of human salvation: "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me." A few days later he gave the chosen three the wonderful object-lesson of the transfiguration, the marvelous illustration of man's spiritual and immortal nature. That they were in any degree able to perceive his real being and that of his companions did but prove their own progress towards the recognition of man as he really is—as divine Mind cognizes man.

There is no more revolutionary and vital demand in the teachings of Christ Jesus than that embodied in these four words, "let him deny himself." Through every avenue of human sense error urges its claim that man is what mortals seem to be; that what we see in our mirrors is the picture of what we really are. With the vast majority of mankind it is unquestioningly accepted as such. But the self-denial Jesus required of his followers was much more than the depriving of one's self of the ordinary things of life, much more than the denial of belief in the pains or pleasures of the senses. It was nothing short of the total repudiation of belief in material existence. The cross it imposes is the daily—nay, hourly—effort to know and demonstrate one's real selfhood by eliminating from consciousness all that is unlike God. John perceived this; and so he wrote in his first epistle, "Every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure." Every man "that hath this hope in him" must of necessity labor to cleanse his consciousness of all that is unspiritual, of all belief that he is what to the corporeal senses he seems to be. The recognition and demonstration of spiritual selfhood must inevitably free one from belief in any other selfhood, and from the penalties inseparable from such belief.

Humanity's failure to meet the requirements of the Way-shower's concept of discipleship has ever arisen from its limited understanding of these requirements. What possibility has mankind of freeing itself from its errors while believing these errors to be an integral part of man's being? How can the victim of a violent temper ever hope to free himself, or be freed, from that wrathful and destructive evil while believing that such evil is real, and that it is his own personal possession? How can a mortal hope to "put on immortality" until he begins to learn that immortality alone is real? What will happen when we really begin to comprehend the truth about ourselves, when, as Paul expressed it, we know even as we are known? What will become of the traits and characteristics which have troubled us so long, of the appetites and passions which have caused us so much distress, when we are thoroughly awake to what we really are—thoroughly conscious of the selfhood God knows? What will happen to our unsatisfied yearnings to be more like Him, to reflect more of His love to those around us, when we realize that His nature is our nature—and not only ours, but that of all with whom we can possibly come in contact?

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