"Where have ye laid him?"

JEANETTE M. HELLER

When the weeping Mary in the extremity of her desolation threw herself at the Master's feet exclaiming, "Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died," Jesus replied with the question, "Where have ye laid him?" Thus does our Saviour reply to each one of us to-day as the exigencies of human experience force us at length to the feet of the Christ, Truth. And in the awakening that follows the searching query, Where have ye laid your brother? our hearts are lightened and the mists of inharmony no longer deceive us with their claim of reality. Every problem that confronts mortals springs from the false belief that man is material—from the failure to see him in his rightful status as the likeness of God, Spirit.

In the story of the raising of Lazarus, as recorded by John, we learn that in response to Christ Jesus' inquiry, "Where have ye laid him?" the weeping friends led him to a tomb. This rock-ribbed prison was secured by a stone laid at its mouth. Jesus at once commanded that the stone be removed, whereupon Lazarus' sister Martha said in remonstrance, "Lord, ... he hath been dead four days." He silenced this insidious and stultifying lie voiced by mortal belief about the true man in the image and likeness of God. Then, those who stood by rolled away the stone and, through divine understanding, Jesus called in a loud voice, the voice of inspiration, that has never failed to be answered when clearly enough heard, "Lazarus, come forth"! Then we read the awe-inspiring statement: "And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with graveclothes: and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus saith unto them, Loose him, and let him go."

So-called mortal mind by its very nature is constantly relegating its false concept of man to the tomb—to the belief that man can sicken and die; and divine Mind alone can call thought forth from this false belief. It is supposititious mortal mind which sentences mankind to the limitations of the flesh; and always it is immortal Mind, through Christ, Truth, that restores thought to the spiritual heritage of boundless freedom.

What are we thinking about the brother who seems to have wronged us, or about the aged friend struggling against so-called material laws of decline; about the sinner in need of regeneration, the sufferer in need of health? Where, indeed, have we laid them? Are we accepting the mortal testimony regarding them, and carrying them off to the tomb of failure and despair?

Christian Scientists respond to the call of their revered Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, when she says (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 451), "Christian Scientists must live under the constant pressure of the apostolic command to come out from the material world and beseparate," and when on the opposite page she writes, "The Christian Scientist has enlisted to lessen evil, disease, and death; and he will overcome them by understanding their nothingness and the allness of God, or good." We cannot be too vigilant in guarding against the mortal beliefs which would dull our perception of the real man's perfect freedom and wholeness. We cannot admit that the real man is less than the perfect reflection of the perfect God. It is only the spiritual understanding that "man was never more nor less than man" (ibid., p. 244) that rolls away the stone of material belief, that reverses and nullifies the unjust claims of evil; it is spiritual understanding alone that looses the hold of fear, and in notes of ringing victory calls thought forth to eternal spiritual freedom. And even the appearance of evil belief falls away at Truth's clarion cry uttered in every age for the liberation of mortals: "Loose him, and let him go."

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