One of the great lessons of Christian Science is the lesson of the persistency of man's true selfhood which was demonstrated for us all in the life of the Master. From his first appearing on the human scene, the beauty and glory of this self were recognized by the thought that was attuned to its perception; and we do not wonder that it appeared to the waiting Wisemen as a star in the darkness of materiality. Its light must have dazzled the doctors in the temple when the child Jesus stood before them expounding the Scriptures. Peter recognized it as the Christ, the Messiah that should take away the sins of the world.

Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, has interpreted it in this age, and through her interpretation of the wondrous meaning of the Master's life has opened up the way for the completion of his mission—the salvation of all mankind from sin, disease, and death. In the textbook of Christian Science, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," our Leader writes (p. 332), "Jesus demonstrated Christ; he proved that Christ is the divine idea of God—the Holy Ghost, or Comforter, revealing the divine Principle, Love, and leading into all truth." It was the true self, the true nature of man, that Jesus demonstrated, and he proved this self to be immune to every suggestion of evil and to persist beyond the grave.

While the manner of Jesus' birth had wrought out for him a higher sense of life and selfhood than that with which the ordinary human being is endowed, nevertheless in so far as he partook of human conditions he entered upon our human struggle to overcome these illusive conditions. In his period of testing in the wilderness he gives us a model for our human warfare. As we study the Biblical presentation of this experience, we perceive that never for a moment in the presence of temptation did the Master lose sight of his true self. When the devil—the allegorical presentment of the belief of life in matter—tempted him to identify himself with the material order and to try as vain mortals have tried throughout the ages to make bread of the stones of material existence, we find him holding to the knowledge of his true selfhood and his relation to God and with this knowledge meeting the temptation with an answer that silenced it. "He answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." We see him reject the suggestions of self-exaltation and self-glorification and maintain the selfhood that is exalted because it glorifies God in obedience to the commandment, "Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve."

Then we are told that angels came and ministered unto him. In this is testified the fact that the true self is ever receiving the angel ministrations of divine Love, because it is ever at one with the Father-Mother, God. Its very being is the power to reflect divine ideas. The true selfhood exists only to bear witness to God. Its sole function is the manifestation of the intelligence and life which are the essential nature of Deity. It is the "I" which Jesus declared when he said, "Be of good cheer; I have overcome the world." And it is the conscious identity of every son of God.

As the true self is the son of God, and as our Master showed the way for all, every human being may have recourse to his true self as did the Master, and there, as our Leader says (No and Yes, p. 36), "find rest from unreal trials" and the recuperation which enables him to triumph over sin, disease, and ultimately death. The true self persists and is eternally glorious. Like the sun or the stars it is forever shining, no matter how obscured by the mists. When the clouds of sense roll in, when the tides of discouragement and depression surge, when sickness seems to rage, all the while the true self stands intact, untouched by, uncognizant of, any error.

It matters not what the suggestion may be, whether of sickness, sin, or any malicious attack—even the whisper of death—everyone has at every moment of his human experience the power which Jesus exercised of retreat into his spiritual self, which renders him impervious to error. Whether he realizes it or not, this power is his, and he has but to awaken to this fact, and begin to exercise the power, to prove that this is so. One's first attempts may be feeble and not yield any great degree of spiritual dominion, but each effort to rise into the consciousness of the true self helps to open up the way. In reality the way has never been closed to human consciousness, since the great Master in his final demonstration rent the veil of the belief in material existence and disclosed the infinite reality of true selfhood as the reflection of the Father-Mother God.

As we study his life as interpreted by Mrs. Eddy, and pray that we may imbibe the spirit of his teachings, we catch glorious glimpses of this self, which becomes more and more real to us as thought is enlarged and perfected through expressing divine sonship. The more we know of the true self, the stronger our desire becomes to attain to its perfection; and this will continue until the claims of material sense grow dim, paling before the full glory that has been revealed to us. There the struggle ceases and one spontaneously reflects the light.

But even in the midst of the struggle, moments of this spontaneous joy and freedom may be had, and such foretastes of heaven will continually refresh and strengthen us along the way, until that perfect consciousness shall be reached which the Revelator describes as the new heaven and new earth, in which all tears are wiped away and there is "no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away."