Editorial July 28, 1951 Issue

JUST ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Helen Wood Bauman

John presented a clear statement of the unity of God and His idea—the Word, or Christ. He saw them as inseparable in all their manifestations. He taught that the Christ must be acknowledged, not alone as "the only begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father," but as the Word made flesh, "the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world" (see John 1). In his first epistle John wrote (4:3), "Every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God." The truth of man's perfection as the offspring of Deity, as God's immortal ideal, had been worked out in human experience. This is the true meaning of the incarnation, the process of salvation which divine wisdom decrees, and which can never be omitted in humanity's attainment of eternal Life.

The acknowledgment of the incarnation, the manifestation of God through the human Jesus, was of tremendous importance to the Christians of John's day. Indeed, it was the Master's instruction that it be acknowledged, and among other statements to that effect he said (John 17:3), "This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent."

This necessity finds its counterpart today in the teaching of Christian Science that the truths of universal harmony which it reveals must be demonstrated at every point. The divine nature must become evident through the regeneration and transformation of mankind. The fact that man is Love's manifestation is to be shown forth in loving deeds of healing, in the patient dissolving of fears and hatred and ignorant beliefs which brings release from the physical ailments that beset mankind. Truth is to be expressed by one's truthful, upright behavior in all human affairs. God is worshiped as Mind in the measure of the true intelligence one expresses.

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