Article April 12, 1941 Issue

"What Jesus loved"

SVEND PONTOPPIDAN BROBY

In her first address given in The Mother Church, Mary Baker Eddy said (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 110). "What grander ambition is there than to maintain in yourselves what Jesus loved, and to know that your example, more than words, makes morals for mankind!" We need to understand more fully what constituted the power that animated our great Master in his marvelous works of healing. Christian Science is revealing this power to mankind, demonstrating the joy and beauty of holiness—wholeness—for which men are ever longing and praying.

To the unenlightened, Jesus seemed to perform miracles when he healed the sick, cast out sin, walked on the water, and fed the multitude with a few loaves and fishes. To the awakened human consciousness, these deeds appear as natural and beautiful proofs that God is Love. Jesus expressed God in all he did, and for him to live was to love; he conceived of no existence separate from God, good. The appearing in human consciousness of the spiritual light which eliminates the shadow of the belief in a material creation and a mortal man results in healing and regeneration. The Christ was Jesus' eternal, spiritual selfhood. This Christ, Truth, also reveals our true selfhood, and the discernment of this fact saves and heals us. Here we may get a glimpse of what it means to maintain in ourselves "what Jesus loved." In her textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mrs. Eddy writes (p. 494), "Reason, rightly directed, serves to correct the errors of corporeal sense." We reason incorrectly when we say that God is Spirit, but man. God's image and likeness, is both spiritual and material; yet this is what mankind generally believes. Christian Science corrects this false belief, showing that man is wholly spiritual, and that materiality is nonexistent. When this awakening comes to us, we see that man's only business is to reflect God. good. Jesus said to Joseph and Mary, when they found him in the temple teaching the learned doctors of the law and asking them questions, "How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?" In this reply we find the keynote to the life of love which Jesus lived. He was so obedient to the law of God that fear, sensuality, and hate were proved to have no power to harm him.

If maintaining in ourselves what Jesus loved may at times appear an almost impossible task, it is only because we are allowing the belief in sin's reality to blur our vision of the Christ. Men would appear to have to learn much, and unlearn much, before approximating the healing work of Jesus. But Christians have no legitimate excuse for procrastination, since Jesus plainly said (John 14:12), "Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father." In view of these words of him whose whole life was dedicated to the healing of sin. disease, and death, it behooves every Christian to look deep into his own thinking, and there find the reason why he is not carrying out the instructions so squarely placed before him in the New Testament. Aggressive mental suggestion is uncovered and destroyed as we follow Jesus in his way.

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