Article May 10, 1952 Issue

NEVER OUTSIDE OF GOD'S ONENESS

DUMONT BEERBOWER

Christ Jesus stated one of the simplest and yet most important fundamentals of divine healing when he said (John 10:30), "I and my Father are one." These words, it will be recalled, came as the climax to the Master's beautifully reasoned and lovingly phrased teaching in the tenth chapter of John, where he explains the scientific relation of God and man.

Using the illustration of the good shepherd and his sheep, so familiar in the everyday life of his hearers, the Master portrays a vivid picture of the gentleness, love, and security which come when the voice of the good shepherd is heard. In like manner he points out how a hireling or false shepherd may open the door for the wolves, thieves, and robbers of materiality to enter and destroy. We are enabled to perceive and realize the spiritual significance of this teaching through the prism of divine Science. The study of Christian Science gives the true seeker the ability to distinguish between the voice of the good Shepherd and that of the hireling and thereby demonstrate for himself that recognition of man's divine oneness, or unity, with God heals.

Man's inseparability from God was the basis of all of Christ Jesus' healing work. His glorious career not only pointed the way to freedom from the ecclesiastical despotism of his day, but disposed of every suggestion that denies the essential relation of Father and son. The victory he won and its value to mankind are summarized by Mary Baker Eddy thus in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 45): "Glory be to God, and peace to the struggling hearts! Christ hath rolled away the stone from the door of human hope and faith, and through the revelation and demonstration of life in God, hath elevated them to possible at-one-ment with the spiritual idea of man and his divine Principle, Love." The enemy that Jesus overcome was not a person or a condition. It was the supposititious motive power of the carnal mind, which Mrs. Eddy defines in this profound comment (ibid., p. 28): "The determination to hold Spirit in the grasp of matter is the persecutor of Truth and Love."

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