Editorial November 2, 1968 Issue

Are You Saved?

Alan A. Aylwin

Are you saved? This is a question earnest religionists have asked for centuries. To many Christians this query still means: Are you saved from eternal punishment through faith in the power of Jesus' sacrificial atonement on the cross? Have you faith that Jesus has paid the debt of sin for you? Are you made "white in the blood of the Lamb"?^{Rev. 7:14:}

If a Christian Scientist is asked "Are you saved?" he answers with fervent conviction in the affirmative. But his response is based on different terms of reference. He agrees wholeheartedly that Christ Jesus is the Saviour of mankind, not because of his suffering on the cross, but because of his wonderful teaching and example and by his mastery of death when he rose from the grave. In other words, what actually saves us from evil—from sin, sickness, and finally death itself—is the truth that Jesus taught and demonstrated, the Christ-element that permeated his every thought and act. Speaking of the Christ—the true idea of spiritual reality that constituted his very selfhood—the Master said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me."^{John 14;6;}

After all, in every aspect of human experience mistaken beliefs, and the trouble they bring, are corrected by right ideas. The right idea of multiplication saves one from the chaos of wrong calculation, the correct sense of harmony saves one from discord; and so on ad infinitum. Then is it not obvious that the same fact holds good in the Science of Christianity? In this connection Mary Baker Eddy writes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: "Christ is the true idea voicing good, the divine message from God to men speaking to the human consciousness. The Christ is incorporeal, spiritual,—yea, the divine image and likeness, dispelling the illusions of the senses; the Way, the Truth, and the Life, healing the sick and casting out evils, destroying sin, disease, and death."^{Science and Health, p. 332;}