Editorial November 26, 1949 Issue

COUNTING THE COST

Helen Wood Bauman

Christ Jesus taught great truths with simple directness. On one occasion, when men thronged his steps, he turned and told them the cost of truly following him. He said (Luke 14:26, 27): "If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple. And whosoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, cannot be my disciple." The Master further clarified these requirements by asking which of them, if planning to build a tower, would not first count the cost, lest he find after starting that he could not afford to finish the work. He summed up his arresting lesson with these words: "Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple."

Only Christian Science makes these teachings of the Master's plain—teachings vastly practical, which, when followed, release spiritual power that obliterates human suffering and sin. This Science reveals man as God's spiritual son, not a human relative jealously possessed or a physical personality called oneself, but the incorporeal idea of divine Mind.

He who loved more deeply than all others could not have required men to hate in the ordinary meaning of that term, but must have figuratively referred to the necessity of understanding the absolute falsity of the mortal sense of existence. Christ Jesus demanded that his followers forsake the false concept in its entirety and not follow Christ merely for the sake of human benefits gained thereby. He knew the counterfeit nature of the carnal mind and saw that there can be no compromise with it. The real and the unreal never actually mingle, and Science destroys the delusion which makes them seem to do so. It reveals man as God's image, uncontaminated by the illusion of birth and flesh.

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