Editorial March 23, 1940 Issue

"An open door"

Evelyn F. Heywood

When Martha went to meet Jesus before the raising of Lazarus, she assured him of her absolute faith in him. Had he been there, she knew that her brother would not have died; and even now if he asked God anything, she doubted not that it would be granted. It was the purpose of Jesus, however, to bring home to those about him the true significance of the Christ, that consciousness of the power of ever-present Mind to heal the sick and raise the dead which is dependent upon no personal authority or intermediary. In supreme and Christly identification of himself with the divine nature he said to Martha, "I am the resurrection, and the life." In this understanding of eternal being must each one find within himself the conscious spiritual recognition of the Life which is God.

Mortal man, accepting as life the evidence of material sense, beginning and ending in darkness, hedged about with limitation and dangers, subject to chance, victimized by disease, has scarcely heeded the divine assurance in Revelation, "Behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it." Yet this was the door which Jesus opened for all men, demonstrating the powerlessness of mortal belief to offset the laws of spiritual knowing which maintain intact the consciousness of man. Because he was the Way, in word and deed, Christ Jesus exemplified "the resurrection, and the life." At the grave of Lazarus he showed, as he had done in two other known instances, and as he was to prove on Mount Calvary, that the life of man is not at the mercy of death.

"The altitude of Christianity openeth, high above the so-called laws of matter, a door that no man can shut; it showeth to all peoples the way of escape from sin, disease, and death," writes Mary Baker Eddy in "Christian Science versus Pantheism" (p. 12). From this height of spiritual knowing Jesus delivered his great message of continuous being to mankind. From it he never descended to even temporary acceptance of the arguments of finiteness, of human vulnerability and impermanence. It was from this height of spiritual vision that Mrs. Eddy gave Christian Science to the world, once more opening wide the door to spiritual freedom which mortal belief had closed.

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