Article May 17, 1930 Issue

Rending the Veil

RICHARD P. VERRALL

Students of Christian Science who perceive the spiritual meaning of the sacred Scriptures, through the literal and figurative wording of the text, can appreciate in some measure what the writer of the epistle to the Hebrews meant when he referred to the way of Christ Jesus as "a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh." The "veil," or "vail" as the word is used in the Scriptures, apparently symbolized a covering or curtain employed to reduce the illuminating power of the Word of God, as revealed to Moses on Sinai and afterwards to the high priest in "the most holy" place, to such a degree that the people were able to perceive and comprehend it.

In process of time, however, the true meaning of the veil became hidden by ritualism and hypocrisy, so that when Jesus appeared, the spiritual significance of the Mosaic law had been practically lost sight of. The Apostle Paul, who interpreted the new dispensation of Christianity to the Gentiles, saw clearly what had happened; and in the third chapter of his second epistle to the Corinthians he makes it plain why Moses used the veil, and how through Christ Jesus it is done away.

In our own day and age, through the discovery of Christian Science by Mary Baker Eddy, we are again reminded of the necessity of individually rending the veil. In the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mrs. Eddy writes (p. 597): "The martyrdom of Jesus was the culminating sin of Pharisaism. It rent the veil of the temple. It revealed the false foundations and superstructures of superficial religion, tore from bigotry and superstition their coverings, and opened the sepulchre with divine Science,—immortality and Love."

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