"Whom seek ye?" was the fearless question with which Christ Jesus lovingly met the traitorous Judas and his band when they rudely broke the stillness of the garden to which the Master had withdrawn to commune with the Father, in final preparation for his crowning demonstration over matter, malice, and mortality. Their blunt reply was, "Jesus of Nazareth." This elicited Jesus' spirited declaration. "I am he," which so startled mortal mind that, we read in the Gospel according to St. John, "they went backward, and fell to the ground." Held in vassalage by error, these persecutors of the just Nazarene were incapable of standing before him who was the Messianic representative of Truth.

Christ Jesus proved by his teaching and example that the man of God's creating can neither fall nor fail, for in the face of direst temptation he maintained man's God-sustained uprightness. Invariably, his words and his works abased evil and exalted good. Lifting up the Christ, he elevated men's thinking and glorified God.

The Way-shower's impersonation of the Christ—the divine idea—in the ripeness of time, followed God's revelation of Himself to Moses as "I AM THAT I AM." The Glossary in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 588) contains this spiritual definition of the term "I AM": "God; incorporeal and eternal Mind; divine Principle; the only Ego." His conscious unity with divine Principle empowered Christ Jesus to declare with authority that he was the Son of God, that is, the individualized manifestation and true witness of divine Principle, Love. From his undeviating allegiance to Principle sprang the master Christian's pure affection, which, never passive, impartially blessed all upon whom his thoughts rested, and divinely healed by changing the receptive individual consciousness from one of materiality to spirituality, from lack to sufficiency, from sickness to health, from sin to holiness. In the penetrating light of the divine ideas which filled his consciousness, error found no hiding place. This is why Jesus was able to read men's minds scientifically. Thus, he was aware of the false beliefs concerning himself entertained by those who opposed him. Forever dwelling in the safety of "incorporeal and eternal Mind," he realized the inviolateness of his spiritual selfhood. His outward surrender to the wicked machinations of his enemies was in accord with his purpose to expose evil's powerlessness; it initiated universal vanquishment of hatred and death, and brought to light man's perfect spiritual nature and eternal coexistence with the I AM, "the only Ego."

In his Christly role of mankind's Saviour, Jesus blazed the trail for all men when, defying error, he took his stand for man's spiritual identity in the likeness of the divine I AM. Soon or late, each one must likewise meet and disprove the aggressive claims of a material sense of personality, and discard the fallacy of a selfhood apart from God, by recognizing that material sense cannot give that which it never possessed—spiritual identity. Victory over the illusion of life in matter comes to each as, in orderly progression, he learns the lesson, taught in Christian Science, that the reflection of Spirit constitutes man's true identity.

Jesus' persecutors, the blinded Pharisees and chief priests, could not hide their baseless deed behind a band of soldiers. Error, on its errand of betrayal, would disguise itself by sending forth a host of aggressive mental suggestions, garbed by personal sense. When these emissaries of mortal mind present themselves to our thought, may our watchful meekness not be lagging! May we not be found in the throng with Judas, who "also . . . stood with them." Nor may we, like Peter, disavow our rightful being in Christ's great brotherhood with a fearful denial of the Christ! Rather may our watchfulness be like that of Jesus, so that light-clad, we may nullify error's attempt to approach under cover of its own darkness, by tearing the mask off personal sense, and by affirming man's true status of immortal being in the image of the I AM.

In the chapter entitled "The Saviour's Mission" in "Unity of Good" (p. 62) our Leader has written: "In Science, Christ never died. In material sense Jesus died, and lived. The fleshy Jesus seemed to die, though he did not. The Truth or Life in divine Science—undisturbed by human error, sin, and death—saith forever, 'I am the living God, and man is My idea, never in matter, nor resurrected from it.'"

Man, "never in matter, nor resurrected from it"! When the light and might of divine Science dissolve the darkness and density of human error, the grave in which material sense would hold the pseudo-man of its own imagining, bursts open. Winged by the vision of Christ's eternal, universal presence, men's mounting hopes rise victorious above clod-bound materialism into the boundlessness of individual spiritual being. The divine model, held up by humanity's Exemplar, enjoins with tender urge the student of Christian Science to consistent affirmation of man's unique birthright of God-given dominion as the reflection of God, the I AM. The irradiance of spiritual reflection displaces the flesh-and-bone existence with its dream of sin and suffering, and sheds on humanity the glory of "the living God."

Spiritual identity, made manifest in individuality of true consciousness, is the sacred treasure of each one of God's children. Since man's true identity expresses the self-existent I AM, it is without beginning, and is not liable to extinction. As we use Christian Science, the consciousness of man's true identity is constant and continuously ascendant. It includes no sickness, sin, nor death—no evil of any mode, but only good. Christian Science encourages its adherents to lay aspiring hold of these scientific truths. Verifying their calling, the prayerful endeavor of Christian Scientists is to prove, step by step, the all-dominant blessed fact that the omnipresence, omniscience, and omnipotence of Life, Truth, and Love—the great I AM—are unceasingly witnessed by individual man. A pertinent passage occurring in the fore-quoted chapter of "Unity of Good" (p. 63) reads: "The I AM was neither buried nor resurrected. The Way, the Truth, and the Life were never absent for a moment. This trinity of Love lives and reigns forever."

The lifework of Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science and the Leader of this worldwide movement Spiritward, proved her to be a consecrated follower in the way of the Christ, a living witness of Truth, and a humble servant of Love. Through her inspired labors it has become possible for each receptive human being not only to believe with firmness that God is, but also to know what He is, and to attain to a demonstrable understanding of man's immortal selfhood in the likeness of his Maker. Our Leader's clear realization and declaration of the truth about God, man, and the universe pointed the way for all mankind, and there is a great company whose lives are publishing these words of Isaiah: "Ye are my witnesses, saith the Lord, and my servant whom I have chosen: that ye may know and believe me, and understand that I am he."