Editorial July 16, 1960 Issue

Spiritual Pre-existence

Helen Wood Bauman

Probably one of the more dynamic yet neglected truths that Jesus gave the world was that of the spiritual pre-existence of man. He once enraged his hearers by saying (John 8:58), "Before Abraham was, I am." And in prayer he declared to God (John 17:24), "Thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world."

Christian Science interprets the Master's words to mean that his real selfhood, the Christ, existed before the human Jesus was born. According to Science, man is made in God’s image; he is spiritual; and he reflects his Maker exactly and perpetually. Then man is not a mortal, beginning as a material embryo and going on to fulfill the maturing and deteriorating action of mortal belief. The real man is an immortal, existing in divine Mind as its idea and having neither beginning nor ending. He coexists with the Mind whose knowing gives him being. This truth the Master understood and acted upon.

Mary Baker Eddy says in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 189), "The meek Nazarene's steadfast and true knowledge of preexistence, of the nature and the inseparability of God and man,— made him mighty." Power is expressed in the prayerful mental work of the Christian Scientist who understands that in his true and Christly selfhood he has existed forever. Release from the mesmeric hold of the physical senses and their finite conceptions comes to one who realizes that because he existed as a conscious, spiritual identity before the material body was formed, his life is not in flesh now, is not conditioned by it, and will never die out of it.

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Article

"I will give you rest"