Article November 1, 2013

Spiritual relationship versus the human

Originally published in the April 28, 1921 issue of The Christian Science Monitor

“Before Abraham was, I am” established for all time a new understanding of Life without, beginning or end of days. This statement carried with it the implication, which aroused the wrath of the materially minded Israelites when Jesus the Christ launched it in their midst, that he antedated Abraham. According to their understanding, which was grossly material, a mortal man was claiming to have been alive in the flesh hundreds of years, when, according to the evidence of the senses he was still young. Thus they accused him of fraud, little understanding that his statement was a great metaphysical fact, claiming spiritual life alone as his, and thereby acknowledging God alone as his creator, which shut out all the human sense of life, including birth and death, as well as the human sense of relationship.

When, in the twelfth chapter of Matthew, after being told that his mother and his brethren were waiting without, Jesus of Nazareth asked, “Who is my mother? and who are my brethren?” he propounded a question that should have startled a sleeping world out of its dream of life in matter, had it not been so content to go on sleeping, and had it not been fearful that in awakening from its mesmerism it would suffer some loss in giving up its false trusts. In the next verse Jesus gave the answer to his own question which clearly elucidated the basis from which he argued. “Behold my mother and my brethren!” he exclaimed, as he stretched out his hand toward his disciples, “For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother.” The metaphysical fact thus brought to light has been made available to mankind through the understanding unfolded in the study of Christian Science, and the student soon learns that instead of being deprived of his relations, he is only losing, or more properly speaking he is giving up, the false human sense, and is gaining the true spiritual sense, which brings to his awakening consciousness the realization of the true relationship of Principle and its idea, man, whereby he has added to his knowledge the true sonship, and the real brotherhood, of the sons and daughters of God.

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