Article December 5, 1931 Issue

Knowing the Truth

ROBIN ENGLAND

When standing at the tomb of Lazarus, surrounded by sorrowing friends, faced by what to mortal sense was a hopeless situation, Jesus said: "Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me. And I knew that thou hearest me always."

For many years this account of the raising of Lazarus appealed to the writer as a wonderful example of Jesus' faith—faith that all things were possible to God, who would respond to the request of His beloved Son. But with the study of Christian Science came the new understanding that Jesus' apparently premature gratitude and his marvelous confidence were not alone the result of faith that God would do something, but, rather, the outcome of the Master's positive knowledge that God's work was done; that the desired state of perfection was the fact of being and always had been true in spite of the seemingly convincing appearances to the contrary. Mrs. Eddy says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 75), "Had Jesus believed that Lazarus had lived or died in his body, the Master would have stood on the same plane of belief as those who buried the body, and he could not have resuscitated it."

Jesus knew that Lazarus lived. For the truth of eternal life and his knowledge of it he thanked God. That which seemed so true to the deceived friends of Lazarus had not the slightest power against his positive knowledge of the truth; for Lazarus "came forth, bound hand and foot with graveclothes," in obedience to the command, contradicting the belief that he was dead and a victim of decay.

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