t divine Science wipes away all tears.

The only conscious existence in the flesh is error of some sort,--sin,
pain, death,--a false sense of life and happiness. Mortals, if at ease in
so-called existence, are in their native element of error, and must become
_dis-eased_, dis-quieted, before error is annihilated.

Jesus walked with bleeding feet the thorny earth-road, treading "the
winepress alone." His persecutors said mockingly, "Save thyself, and come
down from the cross." This was the very thing he _was_ doing, coming down
from the cross, saving himself after the manner that he had taught, by the
law of Spirit's supremacy; and this was done through what is humanly called
_agony_.

Even the ice-bound hypocrite melts in fervent heat, before he apprehends
Christ as "the way." The Master's sublime triumph over all mortal mentality
was immortality's goal. He was too wise not to be willing to test the full
compass of human woe, being "in all points tempted like as we are, yet
without sin."

Thus the absolute unreality of sin, sickness, and death was revealed,--a
revelation that beams on mortal sense as the midnight sun shines over the
Polar Sea.

The Saviour's Mission

If there is no reality in evil, why did the Messiah come to the world, and
from what evils was it his purpose to save humankind? How, indeed, is he a
Saviour, if the evils from which he saves are nonentities?

Jesus came to earth; but the Christ (that is, the divine idea of the divine
Principle which made heaven and earth) was never absent from the earth and
heaven; hence the phraseology of Jesus, who spoke of the Christ as one who
came down from heaven, yet as "the Son of man _which is in heaven_." (John
iii. 13.) By this we understand Christ to be the divine idea brought to the
flesh in the son of Mary.

Salvation is as eternal as God. To mortal thought Jesus appeared as a
child, and grew to manhood, to suffer before Pilate and on Calvary, because
he could reach and teach mankind only through this conformity to mortal
conditions; but Soul never saw the Saviour come and go, because the divine
idea is always present.

Jesus came to rescue men from these very illusions to which he seemed to
conform: from the illusion which calls sin real, and man a sinner, needing
a Saviour; the illusion which calls sickness real, and man an invalid,
needing a physician; the illusion that death is as real as Life. From such
thoughts--mortal inventions, one