Page:Science and Health.djvu/144

140 master's business; and they about theirs; but their masters were unlike; one was Spirit, and the other matter; one God, the other man; one was Soul, the other personal sense. He had suffered and experienced for them, to give liberally his dear-bought bounty unto their famine; but what was his reward? Forsaken of all save a loving few, who knelt in woe at the scene of his crucifixion. Peter would have smitten the enemies of his master, but he bade him put up the sword, and take not the world's weapons to defend Truth. Jesus disdaining artifice or brute courage, when Truth could not protect him from the false accusation, was able to submit to a felon's death. His mission was to vindicate a Principle, and not a person, while their highest ambition was the applause of man.

Jesus could no doubt have withdrawn from his enemies, but he permitted them the opportunity to destroy his body mortal, that he might furnish the proof of his immortal body in corroboration of what he had taught, that the Life of man was God, and that body and Soul are inseparable. The opposite belief was the error he came to destroy. Neither spear nor cross could harm him; let them think to kill the body, and after this, he would convince those he had taught this science, he was not dead, and possessed the same body as before. Why his disciples saw him after the burial, when others saw him not, was because they understood better his explanations of this phenomenon; he had given them the Principle of it, in healing the sick; hence the unsatisfied malignity of his foes, that he was not dead, but furnished a higher demonstration than ever of the Principle he taught, and for which they had hoped to kill