Article October 2, 1954 Issue

"WHY CALLEST THOU ME GOOD?"

HERSCHEL P. NUNN

How natural it would seem that the rich young man should salute Christ Jesus, who so transcendently expressed true goodness, with the words (Mark 10:17), "Good Master, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?" Yet Jesus rebuked him for this, quickly and decisively, saying, "Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God."

Was this because the Master saw that the young man thought of good as a personal possession rather than as a manifestation of the divinity of the Christ? Christ Jesus' recognition of the relation of the human to the divine was a scientific one, a clear seeing of the good expressed in human thought as evidence of the divine. To exalt the materially human, however, would lead to obscuration of the divine.

In our textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mary Baker Eddy clearly points out the difference between the highest sense of humanhood, which was expressed by the human Jesus, and the Christ, his spiritual selfhood, the divinity of true manhood. We are taught that the human must be overcome by the divine; that the human Jesus was not eternal; that only that which is real is eternal, and only that which is eternal is real or God-created. We are also taught that the material or corporeal Jesus disappeared with the ascension. The human consciousness is transformed by the divine when the human is completely replaced by the divine, just as a muddy stream becomes a clear stream, the grayness of the dawn becomes the full light of day.

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