"We have a law, and by our law he ought to die, because he made himself the Son of God" (John 19:7), said the chief priests to Pilate. Christ Jesus recognized himself to be the offspring of Spirit, God. And mortal mind, appearing as the concerted opinion of many mortals, shouted that he must die.

The individual who knows his relationship to God is always the enemy of mortal mind. All through his life Christ Jesus was a free individual conforming to God's law and violating laws of matter and the tradition engendered by such laws. His birth was not according to material law. He had no human father. As a boy he amazed Mary and Joseph when after a three-day search "they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them, and asking them questions" (Luke 2:46). Jesus said to them, "How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?"

When his disciples were accused of violating the tradition governing the washing of hands, he denounced the Pharisaical traditions. He healed on the Sabbath day contrary to what was popularly believed to be law. In his Sermon on the Mount he elevated the human distortion of the moral law from the level of a set of demands for conformity to tradition to that of sacred rules with which to find and prove one's individual relationship to God.

The Master's victory over material law proved his understanding of man as the idea of Spirit. To him man was never the offspring of intelligent matter, or mortal mind, and conformity to mortal mind's decrees was never required of the individual.

Through Christian Science we may see clearly the lines dividing Spirit and matter in human thought. Spirit is God, Love, Principle, the one Mind, and man is image, the reflection of this Mind. Matter is error, the false god of mortal mind embodied in material personalities, who are certain only of death, dependent upon mass conformity for survival, and mortally afraid of the individual who dares espouse a cause outside matter. Material belief always includes the fear of its own destruction, and an individual who is demonstrating his conscious unity with Mind as his Father-Mother God portends by his very presence the death of this false belief. But the death of this error is victory for the individual —freedom from bondage to material law and assurance of eternal life.

In human history the individual is on trial today as surely as he was the day Jesus stood before Pilate. Materialism says: "We have a law, and by our law the individual ought to die. He must surrender his conscious unity with Mind and submit to generally accepted physiological and biological laws."

But God did not create man as a mass of material personalities; He created man in His own image and likeness. Mary Baker Eddy writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 475): "Man is idea, the image, of Love; he is not physique. He is the compound idea of God, including all right ideas; the generic term for all that reflects God's image and likeness; the conscious identity of being as found in Science, in which man is the reflection of God, or Mind, and therefore is eternal; that which has no separate mind from God."

Jesus proved that individual man is indestructible. He also proved that the human being who recognizes his individuality as "the conscious identity of being as found in Science" becomes victorious over all the attempts of mortal error to destroy him. In fact he proved that the consciousness of one's true individuality as an idea of Mind awakens one from the dream of impending or eventual death to the realization of immortal Life, conquering the entire mass of material belief.

Christian Science proves today that an awakening to true individuality destroys disease. Sickness is an attempt by mortal mind to force conformity to mortal belief and prevent one from fulfilling his function as a normal human being. One who knows that his individuality is essential to the infinitude of Mind's manifestation knows too much to be impressed by this attempt. He knows enough to overcome sickness.

As we come to understand our true spiritual selfhood this is manifested in improved human experience. Sickness gives way to health, lack to abundance, stagnation to progress, discord to harmony, loneliness to completeness, uncertainty to certainty, hatred to love. And each healing is a step in the overcoming of belief in man as a collective mass submissive to mortal error.

One who desires to increase his ability to heal may need to increase his affection for the individual, to take a more courageous stand against all that would dim in human experience the bright appearing of true individuality, especially cherishing the right of the individual to follow his highest sense of right even when it does not agree with tradition or with one's own views. At the same time, he may confidently acknowledge the power of the Christ, Truth, to illuminate human consciousness and to lead every individual and every nation to freedom in divine Life.

The Christian Scientist may say: "We have a law, and according to that law the individual may understand himself to be the son of God. And if he does, he will destroy despotism and prove life to be eternal."

Carl J. Welz