Article February 7, 1976 Issue

Jesus and the Christ

ALAN A. AYLWIN

Did you ever consider what it would be like if, as Jesus' disciples, you had been with him day in and day out during his brief but effective ministry? I suppose many of us have imagined the inspiration that would result from walking and talking with the Master, but we can be certain that he himself would be the first to turn our attention from his personality to the truth he taught and lived so superbly.

An important part of his mission was to point human thought away from the idolatry of personal adulation to the prayerful contemplation of God as the source of all goodness—as infinite Spirit, the center and circumference of all real being. When someone addressed him as "good Master," Jesus replied, "Why callest thou me good? none is good, save one, that is, God."^{Luke 18:18, 19;} If we had been with Jesus during his ministry, we would have been eyewitnesses to the crucial period in the most remarkable life ever lived among men. For three years we would have seen evil in every form destroyed by the power of Christ—the truth of spiritual man in unity with God—culminating in Jesus' mastery over death and the grave, and his final ascension above all material conditions.

Students of Christian Science do not worship Jesus or look upon him as God, but they show their love and reverence for him by striving to follow his precepts and example. To them he is the Way-shower, he who shows us the way to destroy all forms of evil—sin, sickness, material limitations of all sorts. He understood and demonstrated the healing, saving Truth, or Christ, so supremely that he became known as Christ Jesus, or Jesus the Christ.

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