Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.djvu/295

Rh it was the higher law which he obeyed, in defiance of matter or mortality, and that law sustained him.

The divine must overcome the human at every point. The Science Jesus taught and lived must triumph over all material beliefs about Life, Substance, and Intelligence, — over the power of evil and death.

The meek demonstrator, the highest Instructor and Friend of man, met his fate alone. No human eye was there to pity, no arm to save. Forsaken by all whom he had blessed, this faithful sentinel of God, at the highest post of honor, — accepting the grandest trust of Truth and Love, — was ready to be transformed by the renewing of Infinite Spirit. He was to prove that man, in Divine Science, is superior to all material conditions, is above the reach of human wrath, is able to triumph over sin, sickness, and death.

During his night of gloom and glory in the garden, he understood eminently the utter error of the notion of any possible material intelligence. The pangs of neglect and the staffs of bigoted ignorance smote him sorely. His students slept. He said unto them, “Can you not watch with me one hour?” He held uncomplaining guard, watching, waiting, struggling, in voiceless agony, but he received no response to that human yearning; and then he turned forever away from earth to Heaven, from sense to Soul.

The last supreme moment of mockery, desertion, torture, a sense of the magnitude of his work, wrung from his lips the awful cry, “Why hast Thou forsaken me?”

This despairing appeal, if made to a human being, would impugn the justice or love of that father, who could withhold a clear token of his presence to sustain and bless