Jesus never identified himself with matter, or mortal mind, in any of its guises. To him matter, whether it claimed to have weight or form, to be solid or liquid, offered neither help nor hindrance. Always Jesus maintained in consciousness his statement. "I and my Father are one," and that oneness excluded any admission of or support from matter. It was this inseparability from God. Spirit, that kept him above mortal-mindedness, or the material world. His own words, in the seventeenth chapter of John, witness to the truth of his statement, "I am not of the world."

The beloved Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science clearly perceived Jesus' apartness from the world, for she has written in her book "No and Yes" (p. 36): "Jesus' true and conscious being never left heaven for earth. It abode forever above, even while mortals believed it was here."

Because the Master never thought of himself as of material origin he was not hindered by matter in his progress and unfolding understanding of Life. He could not have walked on the water had he accepted the belief in a mortal body or the reality of so-called material law. Peter's attempt to walk on the water at Jesus' bidding failed because Peter had not yet demonstrated that matter was illusion, and that Mind alone was substance. Peter was afraid because his faith had not risen to spiritual understanding, which is substance and always able to uphold and sustain man.

Jesus was neither tempted by the amount of matter and material power that the devil offered him, nor dismayed by the seeming need for more matter wherewith to feed the multitudes. In the first instance he looked into the reality of spiritual being, his heavenly kingdom, and the material world had no lure for him. In the second instance his spiritual vision comprehended the multitude's real hunger, and this spiritual vision, embracing all, lifted thought and freed it from the limits set by material sense. This freedom from limited material sense was instantly manifested in the abundance of food for all, which was the human need.

Wherever the spiritually hungry are there, too is the Christ, ready to feed and refresh them. The boastful promise of the devil that he could and would give Jesus "all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them," and the negative plaint of the disciples, "We have here but five loaves, and two fishes," neither flattered nor depressed Jesus.

Jesus claimed no relationship, assented to no sonship or brotherhood with mortals. Rather did he endeavor to elevate all mankind from the realm of the physical senses to the spiritual realm of thought and deed. "For whosoever shall do the will of God the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother," Jesus told his twelve disciples when they informed him that his mother and brethren sought him. He likewise never identified himself with years, and so was never fettered by their fewness or impeded by their number. At the material age of twelve he was intelligently about his Father's business, and hesitated not to question and answer the doctors of the law although they were possessors of much material learning and knowledge.

The great stone at the door of the tomb presented no unsolvable problem of stubborn resistance, because Jesus had never accorded matter the power to resist, impede, or imprison him or his right activity. Both the supposed debility of human sense, caused by loss of blood, lack of air water, and food, and the seeming weight and strength of the huge rock testified vainly against spiritual power. Each extreme mortal fear was dissipated through the calm confidence Jesus maintained in omnipotent and omniactive Spirit. This last great overcoming of matter was but the final stand of his real selfhood against the claim of a material body.

No limiting mortal testimony ever prevailed over the spiritual evidence of his perfection. And when Jesus finally and completely proved the nothingness of matter for all times and peoples, the fleshly body associated with him by others disappeared to the material senses.

Christian Scientists are learning to deny matter and to follow Jesus' example. Under the marginal heading "New era in Jesus," on page 138 of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mary Baker Eddy, the author, has written, "Jesus established in the Christian era the precedent for all Christianity, theology, and healing." She adds, "The Christian can prove this to-day as readily as it was proved centuries ago."