Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1898).djvu/378

358 appetites and passions as the Nazarene. Be rebuked sinners pointedly and unflinchingly, because he was their friend.

The reputation of Jesus was the very opposite of his character. Why? Because the Principle and practice

of Jesus were misunderstood. He was at work in Divine Science. His words and works were unknown to the world, because above and contrary to the world's religious sense. Men believed in God as humanly mighty, rather than as divine Principle.

The world could not interpret aright the discomfort Jesus inspired, and the spiritual blessings which might

flow therefrom. Science shows the cause of the shock so often produced by Truth, — namely, that it arises from the great distance between the individual and Truth. Like Peter, we should weep over the warning, instead of denying the Truth, or mocking the lifelong sacrifice which goodness makes for evil.

Jesus bore our sins in his own body. He knew the mortal error which constitutes the material body, and could destroy that error; but at the time when Jesus felt our infirmities, he had not conquered all the beliefs of the flesh, or his sense of material life, nor had he risen to his final demonstration of spiritual power.

Had he shared the sinful beliefs of others, he would have been less sensitive to those beliefs. Through the magnitude of his human life, he demonstrated the divine Life. Out of the amplitude of his pure affection, he defined Love. With the affluence of Truth, he vanquished