Editorial June 1, 1929 Issue

Service

Duncan Sinclair

Students of Christian Science are agreed that Christ Jesus has given them a perfect example of service, and that it is their duty to endeavor to follow his example. What was the nature of the service rendered by Jesus? It may be said in reply that his life was dedicated to the service of God, and that this divine service embraced that aid which he so freely bestowed on humanity. It is impossible to dissociate the homage the great Master paid to God from the healing and saving work he performed for mankind.

Now in serving God as he did Jesus must have had a very clear understanding of the Father, as he loved to call Him. The Gospels of the New Testament show this. God to him was omnipresent Spirit or Truth, the perfect One, the only creator, the loving Father who cares for all His children with a tenderness which human language is inadequate fully to express. Jesus understood God as never for a moment separate from His creation, as continually supporting it; and so he could declare, "I and my Father are one." He acknowledged man's entire dependence on God, and God's unlimited goodness to man; and the result was an obedience to God, good, beyond parallel in human history.

How did Jesus' service to God show itself? It was made manifest in his prayerful attitude towards the Almighty, in the purity of his life, in the high moral level at which that life was lived, in the extraordinary spirituality which characterized it. And how did Jesus' service to mankind show itself? In that he presented to mortals the ideal of manhood, an ideal which manifested itself in his constant effort to do good. On every opportunity that presented itself he never failed to bless the afflicted. The four Gospels of the New Testament bear record of the healings of all manner of disease and sin he accomplished, of the sorrows he relieved, of the hope of eternal Life he kindled, of the love with which he blessed whoever came to him with faith in their hearts. Jesus' record of unselfish service to mankind will stand till time shall be no more as an incentive, as an inspiration, to all his true followers to go and do likewise.

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