Article February 1, 1936 Issue

Sonship

LELA MAY AULTMAN

We are comforted in every need by knowing the presence of our Father-Mother God. No loneliness or fear can exist within the radiant consciousness of God's nearness, of the tender protection, the watchful care and gentle guidance of our Mother's love; of the strength, the divine power and unfaltering courage of our Father, always at hand to bless us. Through the teachings of Christian Science we learn to know ourselves as the beloved sons and daughters of God, dwelling always in His household, governed by His law, and maintained in blessed, joyous, mutually satisfying relationship with all His children.

Christian Science teaches us to treasure this priceless heritage of sonship, and to keep our thought of this divine relationship always clearly before us. Let us see how greatly it figured in Jesus' life and work. We are told in the Gospels that Jesus came to John to be baptized, and that when he came out of the water, "he saw the heavens opened, and the Spirit like a dove descending upon him: and there came a voice from heaven, saying, Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." Thus was his sonship with God revealed clearly to him. Jesus lived and proved this sonship, teaching and healing mankind, until, in the mountaintop experience which we call the transfiguration, his sonship was also revealed to those disciples whose thought was prepared to perceive it. We read again, that "a voice came out of the cloud, saying, This is my beloved Son: hear him."

Why was this recognition of his divine sonship so vital that its revelation was the introduction to the years of Jesus' healing ministry? The certain knowledge of his unity with God, of God's fatherhood, and of man's likeness to God, Jesus proclaimed with courage and authority. And it was this declaration of sonship which aroused intense opposition from the element of anti-Christ which sought to overthrow him and thus annul the fruitage of his teaching and lifework. We are told that the Jews sought to kill him because he said that God was his Father. Commenting on this attitude, Mrs. Eddy has written in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 133), "That he made 'himself equal with God,' was one of the Jewish accusations against him who planted Christianity on the foundation of Spirit, who taught as he was inspired by the Father and would recognize no life, intelligence, nor substance outside of God." Why was the materialism typified by the thinking of Jesus' enemies so incensed by this declaration of sonship? Because it feared it; because the realization of man's direct oneness with God, his unity with Spirit, his Godlikeness and reflection of divine power, is the destroyer of the carnal mind. Materiality cannot exist in the presence of conscious spirituality; evil suggestion cannot deceive thought so enlightened, so aware of man's heritage of joy, health, spiritual strength, and eternal life. The full understanding of man's sonship with God is utter annihilation to every claim of the adversary. It is when we heed this true report of man's eternal and blessed relationship to God that in our own human consciousness the accuser is cast down.

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