Article August 27, 1949 Issue

TRUE CONCEPTS

DENNEY W. BRANKLE

Under the marginal heading, "The kingdom within," Mary Baker Eddy writes on pages 476 and 477 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures": "Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals. In this perfect man the Saviour saw God's own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick." Jesus had the true concept of man. He knew that man, the eternal likeness of God, is created to glorify his creator; that this man of God's creating is pure, upright, joyous, complete, satisfied; that he expresses only the qualities of God; and that no sense of inharmony, discord, un-loveliness, or lack ever has touched, nor can it ever touch, God's perfect spiritual idea.

Jesus repudiated every claim presented by the carnal mind in regard to man and the universe. Had his concept of substance been formed by material sense testimony, he would have been unable to feed the five thousand. When the material senses asserted that the ruler's daughter was dead, the Master refused to accept this false view, denying it with the emphatic statement (Matt. 9:24), "The maid is not dead, but sleepeth;" and it is recorded that he "took her by the hand, and [she] arose."

No doubt the fury of the storm at sea seemed very real to Jesus' disciples, but when they appealed to him for help he refused to accept their concept of the situation. He knew, as our Leader so forcibly states (Science and Health, p. 293): "There is no vapid fury of mortal mind—expressed in earthquake, wind, wave, lightning, fire, bestial ferocity—and this so-called mind is self-destroyed." And his knowing was reflected in a calm sea. In each of these three instances is shown the utter unreliability of sense testimony, or the mortal mind concept, as well as the value of cultivating the true concept.

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