Article December 21, 1935 Issue

The Way

IRMA DECKER

Christ Jesus, as recorded in the fourteenth chapter of John's Gospel, realizing that he would soon leave his disciples, tenderly comforted them with rich promises. The true comfort, expressed in his words, is a strengthening aid; and in all that Jesus said is found a tender and strengthening promise that his disciples could prove the truth as he had proved it.

The promise, "I go to prepare a place for you. ... And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know," was followed by Thomas' question, "How can we know the way?" Was this way a material course evident to the physical senses? No; Jesus plainly stated, "I am the way, the truth, and the life." Mrs. Eddy says (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 75), "Christ was 'the way;' since Life and Truth were the way that gave us, through a human person, a spiritual revelation of man's possible earthly development." We come to the Father through the Christ, Truth. This way leads from material sense, from the limitations and bondage of the beliefs of material or physical laws, and is always in the line of progress heavenward. It is illumined by the light of reflected good, and neither person nor place can obstruct or interfere with one's following it. The "earthly development" our Leader speaks of is important, and precludes any belief that we may find a short cut to the kingdom of heaven. This development comes through dropping false material beliefs and their consequences, and acquiring spiritual understanding with its healing and regeneration. We may know we are in "the way" as we find ourselves more conscious of the joy of spiritual achievement more willing to give than to receive, and to "love ... without dissimulation."

"Shew us the Father," cried Philip. How many times have we, like Philip, said, "Shew us the Father"! in Jesus' reply is revealed a truth which brings us closer to God: "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." In other words, through the understanding or spiritual discernment of the Christ we see God; and all may thus see and know Him. Philip's thinking is characteristic of the thinking of many of us today. Through eagerness and perhaps impatience to see God, we lose sight of "the way," not realizing that only "through discernment of the spiritual opposite of materiality" (Science and Health, p. 171) can we enter the gates of paradise, the key to which is divine Science. We close the gates with false human beliefs.

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