Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.djvu/209

Rh The interior meaning of the apostolic words is this: Then shall man be found perfect as the Father, indestructible in his Life, “hid, with the Christ, in God,” where human sense hath not seen it, — safe in the Divine Principle.

The idea of God, presented by Jesus, was scourged in person as in Principle; and that man was accounted criminal who could prove God's powerful reality by healing the sick, casting out error, spiritualizing materialistic beliefs, raising the dead — dead in trespasses and sins, resting on the basis of matter, and blind to the perception of Spirit, or Truth.

The Pharisees of old thrust the spiritual idea, and the man that bore it, out of their synagogues, and retained their materialistic beliefs about God. To-day, as of yore, unconscious of the reappearing of the spiritual idea, religionists shut the door upon it, and condemn the cure of the sick and sinful, if it be wrought on any but a material theory. Prophesying this rejection of the true idea of God, — this salvation from all error, physical and mental, — Jesus asked, “When the Son of Man cometh, shall he find faith on earth?”

Paul had a clear sense of the demands of Truth upon mortals, physically and spiritually, when he said, “Present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.” But he who was begotten of the beliefs of the flesh, or served them, could never reach, in this world, the divine heights of his Master. The time cometh when the spiritual origin of man, the Spirit that ushered Jesus into human presence, will be understood and demonstrated. When first spoken in any age, Truth, like the light, “shineth