Article December 12, 1936 Issue

More Abundant Life

ROSE L. KEMPTHORNE

"I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." These simple words of Christ Jesus reveal the sublime magnanimity of him who lived more truly, more richly, than has any other before or since. The humble Nazarene lived abundantly because he loved unselfishly, unstintingly, unceasingly. His sole purpose in running the gamut of human experience was to show men how to live by showing them how to love. What but purest love for God and man could have sustained him through unprecedented trials? What else could have given him the courage to endure the world's hatred of Truth and the brutality of his persecutors, even those whom he lived to bless? Consider the unparalleled example of selfless, forgiving love that found utterance at the crucifixion, that culminating act of inhumanity, in the fervent appeal, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do"!

No individual in subsequent history has so thoroughly understood and closely emulated the Master's career of self-sacrifice and untiring devotion as the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy. This must be the inevitable conclusion of all who have understood her revelation sufficiently to give heed to her faithful following of his great example of selfless service. In commenting on his magnificent life of love, she has written in the textbook (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 54), "That he might liberally pour his dear-bought treasures into empty or sin filled human storehouses, was the inspiration of Jesus' intense human sacrifice." In her own search for Truth and her self-renouncing life of devotion to the holiest of all causes—the establishment of the kingdom of heaven on earth—she exemplified her ideal. This ideal she sums up succinctly in the words from her poem "Love" (Poems, p. 7):

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