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Jesus was or is eternal, but that the divine idea or
Christ was and is so and therefore antedated Abraham;
not that the corporeal Jesus was one with the
Father, but that the spiritual idea, Christ,
dwells forever in the bosom of the Father, God, from
which it illumines heaven and earth; not that the Father
is greater than Spirit, which is God, but greater, infinitely
greater, than the fleshly Jesus, whose earthly career was
brief.
(-15- The Son's duality)
XV. The invisible Christ was imperceptible to the
so-called personal senses, whereas Jesus appeared as a
bodily existence. This dual personality of the
unseen and the seen, the spiritual and material,
the eternal Christ and the corporeal Jesus manifest
in flesh, continued until the Master's ascension, when
the human, material concept, or Jesus, disappeared,
while the spiritual self, or Christ, continues to exist in
the eternal order of divine Science, taking away the sins
of the world, as the Christ has always done, even before
the human Jesus was incarnate to mortal eyes.
(-16- Eternity of the Christ)
XVI. This was "the Lamb slain from the foundation
of the world," - slain, that is, according to the testimony
of the corporeal senses, but undying in
the deific Mind. The Revelator represents the
Son of man as saying (Revelation i. 17, 18): "I am the
first and the last: I am he that liveth, and was dead
[not understood]; and, behold, I am alive for evermore,
[Science has explained me]." This is a mystical statement
of the eternity of the Christ, and is also a reference
to the human sense of Jesus crucified.
(-17- Infinite Spirit)
XVII. Spirit being God, there is but one Spirit, for
there can be but one infinite and therefore one God.
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