Article July 14, 1956 Issue

"I AND MY FATHER ARE ONE"

MARGARET V. HEYWOOD

In John's Gospel we read (1:1, 14): "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . . And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us." Do not these verses sum up the identity of the Word, the Christ and its mission— to make the Christ practical in human experience? Mary Baker Eddy says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 332), "Christ is the true idea voicing good, the divine message from God to men speaking to the human consciousness." We must first know the Christ subjectively if we are to see its power externalized in human affairs.

The one thing which underlay Christ Jesus' teaching and from which he never wavered was his absolute conviction of his unity with God, his Father. "I and my Father are one" (John 10:30) was the standpoint from which he spoke and worked. And we can see that this standpoint must base all spiritual thinking, for nothing less than the oneness of Principle and idea can be perfect in thought and action. This oneness, however, does not imply sameness but the unseverable relationship of cause and effect.

We know, as Mrs. Eddy tells us, that although the patriarchs and prophets caught glorious glimpses of the Messiah, or Christ, they never seemed quite to attain Jesus' conception of oneness with God—the oneness which demonstrated Christ as blessing all men, all individualities, without distinction of race, color, or material circumstances. The Master did not forbid anyone to enter the Holy of Holies. He did not require an intermediary priest to make supplications. The veil of the temple was about to be rent. God's oneness meant God's allness. No one was to be left out of that allness, which includes the individuality and identity of all men. Each individual in his true or spiritual identity is acknowledged by the Scriptures to be a king and priest unto God (see Rev. 1:6).

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