"With his stripes we are healed"

MARJORIE N. BUFFUM

ON page 20 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mary Baker Eddy makes this highly important statement: "Jesus bore our infirmities; he knew the error of mortal belief, and 'with his stripes [the rejection of error] we are healed.'" It has always been admitted that Jesus bore our infirmities, but it has sometimes been thought that his personal sacrifice absolved individuals from making any effort. Mortals were to do the best they could to lead upright, moral lives; but what a poor best it appeared to be compared with the example of the Master, which has seemed well-nigh impossible to follow! No wonder that after the third century a gulf apparently yawned between the Way-shower and his followers! How many since then have contemplated the glorious achievements of our Master with a wistful gratitude and a frustrated longing to go and do likewise!

Gratitude, however, is never fruitless. The flame of spiritual gratitude kept alive through intervening centuries prepared the way for the revelation of Christian Science to our Leader. The tremendous value of her discovery is that it shows us precisely—as an exact Science must of necessity do—how to obey the teachings of Christ Jesus. There need be no more groping and wondering when one is ready to accept Christian Science as a revelation of the divine Principle illustrated in the life of the great Exemplar.

Through its mistaken interpretation of Jesus' life-work, scholastic theology has taught the virtue of unjustly suffering for others. It has inculcated gratitude and adoration for Jesus as the one who preeminently suffered for others. This has unfortunately led to the doctrine that God sends suffering and is responsible for it, thereby apparently presenting patient endurance till death should come as the only escape from human agony. In this cloud of misery and resignation the joyous victory over suffering and death is almost lost sight of.

What, then, are these "stripes" with which "we are healed"? Instead of being suffering and error, as has been mistakenly supposed, the stripes are the rejection of suffering and error. This is so vitally important a point that it should never be lost sight of. There is a vast difference between bowing one's head meekly to the inevitable and firmly denying the reality of an adverse condition, till no false belief is left for it to feed upon. One who accepts the doctrine that God is responsible for sin, disease, and death has no basis for denying these errors, and no strength to resist an apparently inevitable state of things. But knowing that God always has been and always will be infinitely, purely good, and that His creation, including man, is exactly like Him, it becomes a duty, as well as a privilege, for mankind to take upon themselves "his stripes [the rejection of error]." Stripes are the result of being beaten or scourged. That is exactly what materiality seems to do—to beat upon mankind with its opinions, its demands, and its supposed advantages. To reject this error, we must intrench ourselves ever more firmly in the assurance of the oneness and allness of God, as He is revealed to us in Christian Science, and of our power to reflect Him. As enlightened Christians we cannot, in reality, do anything else, and in this endeavor we are so panoplied with love for God and man that trials become comparatively light. Any sense of loneliness or of lack of supply or protection is succinctly explained on page 3 of Science and Health: "How empty are our conceptions of Deity!" We must indeed exchange the mortal concepts of God for His revelation of Himself through Christ Jesus and Christian Science—His two witnesses!

Our individual consent to the world's belief in evil makes the "stripes [the rejection of error]" seem more arduous, but we can always comfort ourselves with the glorious statements of truth in the Bible, to which Christian Science has given us the "key." One of these is, "Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies." In other words, neither our own false beliefs nor those of others have the power to keep the healing, nourishing, sustaining Truth and Love from ministering to all our needs.

Our gratitude for God and His Christ is deeper and more constant as Christian Science reveals to us our spiritual ability to reject error. When the stripes and the cross seem heavier than we can bear, we can pray, as did the Master, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." This is a sublime protest of the unreality of hate. Only from the depths of an unshakable understanding of God and man could come such a declaration. Only from a sense of complete support from infinite divine Mind could come such assurance. Our revered Leader says in "No and Yes" (p. 34), "Love bruised and bleeding, yet mounting to the throne of glory in purity and peace, over the steps of uplifted humanity,—this is the deep significance of the blood of Christ." Do we not already see much of this uplifted humanity to-day? And is it not evident that a willingness to take upon themselves those sacred stripes is healing not only those who accept them, but also many others, until not alone the suffering of the just for the unjust, but suffering of any sort, shall be no more?

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