Editorial October 28, 1933 Issue

Jesus Abolished Death

W. Stuart Booth

The world should rejoice that the glad message of Christ Jesus, "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly," is being repeated, explained, and made practical by Christian Science. The Master knew that naught is veritable which does not express God and His goodness, divine Principle and its harmony and justice—which does not speak of Life, and its purity, providence, and perfection. This knowledge enabled Jesus to disprove the claims of sin, sickness, limitation, and death. And, what is more, he gave assurance that those who believe on him, understand the Christ, Truth, shall do the works he did. This evidences the fact that Jesus' demonstrations over death, as well as over sin and disease, were due to his understanding of and obedience to God's invariable, ever operative, ever available law of harmonious and eternal activity.

In its explication of Spirit and spiritual law Christian Science takes as its premise the fact that God, the source of all reality, is perfect Mind, infinite Truth, divine Love and Life. From this is deduced the fact that individual man, God's image or reflection, is a spiritually mental being, an individual consciousness, constituted of the immortal qualities of divine Mind, Life, and Love. Christian Science also shows the wholly mental nature of human experience; it declares that there are no material conditions, because matter is merely the objectification of material thinking. Verification of these scientific statements is found in the Scriptures, where are indicated the spiritual means and methods employed by Christ Jesus in overcoming sin, disease, and death. Furthermore, the many Christian Science healings of all manner of disease prove that the human body is in every respect the servant of thought. Should a student of Christian Science be tempted to believe that his physicality is sick, he turns his thought to God; he denies discord and disease, and clings to the truth of spiritual being. Thus fear and other disturbing thought-conditions are displaced, and the physical evidence is changed and corrected. When Christ Jesus was appealed to for help by one whose body manifested a considerable degree of inactivity called palsy, the thought of the patient, not his physicality, was considered and dealt with; and the man was healed immediately.

That death also is primarily a thought-condition was proved by Christ Jesus with Lazarus and others. When he stood before the tomb where Lazarus' totally inactive or dead body had lain four days, Jesus called to a human consciousness, not to physicality, "Lazarus, come forth." And we are told that "he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with graveclothes." Writing of this in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 75) Mrs. Eddy says: "Jesus restored Lazarus by the understanding that Lazarus had never died, not by an admission that his body had died and then lived again. 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." That Jesus' purely spiritual and mental method of dealing with both partial and total inaction of the body is Christianly scientific is incontrovertible. Obviously the Master knew that all conditions of human experience are primarily mental, and he understood and applied the corrective truth that God is the only Mind.

Send a comment to the editors

We'd love to hear from you!

Easily submit your testimonies, articles, and poems online.

Submit

Jesus Abolished Death

We'd love to hear from you!

Sign up for unlimited access