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 and all--Christ Jesus came to save men,
through ever-present and eternal good.