Article October 19, 1935 Issue

Persistency of the True Self

MARY WELLINGTON GALE

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."

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