Lesson VIII
JESUS THE HEALERRev. W. John Murray
The Murray Course in Divine Science
Society of the Healing Christ
New York, 1927.
St. Matthew, beginning his account of the public life of Jesus, says:
- Mt. 4:23-25
“And Jesus went about all Galiliee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people.
“And his fame went throughout all Syria; and they brought him all sick people that were taken with divers diseases and torments, and those which were possessed with devils, and those which were lunatic, and those that had the palsy; and he healed them.
“And there followed him great multitudes of people from Galilee, and from Decapolis, and from Jerusalem, and from Judea and from beyond Jordan.”
Thus is presented a first-hand picture of Jesus starting out on his mission of carrying Truth to mankind, and “glorifying God” in the use of great spiritual powers. We have no knowledge of all the miracles wrought by Jesus, but of the thirty-three recorded twenty-four were for the cure of the sick. He gave hearing to the deaf, sight to the blind, activity to the lame and the paralyzed, health and cleanliness to the leprous, and called back to life three persons who had died. The epileptic had their devils cast out and the insane were restored to sanity. When necessity arose for money or bread Jesus spoke the word and money and bread were supplied.
Jesus did not make a secret of the source of his power. It came, he said, from the Father. It was used to confirm the word that he spoke, to convince the skeptical of his reception of power and authority from God. But this was merely an external reason. The true reason was that the healing of the sick and the diseased was inseparable from his spiritual mission. To save and to heal means, according to etymologists, the same thing. Salvation, a much-abused word, means healing, a saving from false-thinking and error. The healings effected by Jesus showed his love for humanity. He could not witness suffering without feeling an immense compassion for the victim of disease, bound down to false conditions and crying for aid. To the spiritualized Jesus the sight of men and women in the chains of sickness and disease must have been revolting, as he could see them only as the pure, celestial, perfect spirits they really were behind their physical bondage. No cry came to him from an earnest soul that was not immediately answered. Even the woman who touched the hem of his garment, reverently and in complete self-effacement, received healing from him as her thought impacted upon his and made him aware of her act.
The works that he did would be done, he said, by his followers, and even greater works if they had faith and believed on him. Anything, he said, that we would ask of the Father in his name the Father would do. If we had faith even as tiny as a mustard seed, he said, we could remove mountains.
Jesus showed that even death could be overcome, proving it by the raising of the daughter of Jairus, the son of the widow of Nain, and the brother of Mary and Martha; but most conclusively by bursting the bonds of the grave in raising himself on the third day of his cessation from mortal life in the Resurrection.
The followers of Jesus performed miracles of a similar kind, even to raising of the dead. Almost at once, after the disciples of Jesus had received the Holy Spirit, they went out speaking in new tongues and working signs and wonders in the name of Jesus of Nazareth, the risen Christ.
The power of healing continued in the early church, as attested by the Acts and the Epistles of the Apostles, confirming the faithful and bringing in armies of converts. The spread of the early church was remarkable because of the fervor and power of its members.
We have all received the teaching that has held for some seventeen centuries that this power was given by God in the beginning to enable the church to get a start, and that it was withdrawn as the church became established. Miracles had ceased to appear. Although now and then a miracle was wrought, and fully attested and verified, the teaching was that these were exceptional acts of God, earned by a faith so pure and a religious life so holy that the miracle was granted to testify to the saintly character of the worker. But in every age, and under circumstances publicly known, miracles have been wrought, and have been celebrated as proof, both of the person healed and the one who did the healing.
It is our claim that this contention of the church has been totally erroneous; that healing is an inseparable part of the spiritual life; that the conditions for healing laid down by Jesus are as applicable today as they were in the days of Peter and Paul; that healing is a mark of the new birth of Christ in the soul and that the power to heal others, present or absent, is a property of the Christ consciousness today as it ever has been when called into full exercise.
We believe that the power of healing one’s self or another is a birthright of the Christ-minded and that by its exercise and by absorption into Spirit it can be developed to the fullest degree; that it can overcome even death through faith and Christ-like purity of mind.
We believe that in the explanations of Jesus and his followers the full meaning of the powers of the soul are outlined, the supremacy of spirit over matter demonstrated and the conscious union of the soul with its Maker made understandable.
We believe that miracles are not acts performed by the invocation of supernatural powers so much as the exercise of conscious mental powers acting in union with the Spirit, or Father, through the Christ spirit in each of us.
Jesus healed people not only of their diseases but of their sins, and the connection between the two is not fortuitous or accidental but joint and positive. “Sin” is a false step, a missing of the mark, a grounding of the ideal in the sensual, a state of mind in which the god-like is lost in the bestial, “a descent,” as it has been well described, “of mind into matter.”
It is a mistake, we believe, to attribute sickness to sin. But there is this much truth in that contention, that sickness is an effect following from false thinking and sin is a condition resulting from a descent of the mind from the spiritual to the material. In each case disorder followed, and this being naturally opposed to the spirit has affected the mind in the one instance and worked out in the body in the other.
An abnormal spiritual state is at the root of every morbid condition of the body. The Christ principle is in natural antagonism to disease as it is to sin. The cure for the one and the other lies in faith in God and an effort to express through a strong mental conviction the supremacy of the spirit over the flesh.
Jesus lived a life of marvelous purity. Once, when heckled by the Pharisees, he turned upon them and threw this challenge at them: “Who among you can convict me of sin?” There was no reply, even from these, his bitter enemies. His life was spotless. Jesus had attained in the long Silence that preceded his public mission to the highest spiritual plane, absorption into the Divine. The laws of nature were known to him in all their fullness of action and reaction, of integration and disintegration. Just as we who live in the third dimensional state of consciousness are aware of the limitations of animals who live in that of the second dimension, so Jesus, who lived in the fourth dimensional state, was aware of all our limitations. As he said, he could lay down his life and he could take it up again. He did not suspend natural laws in what are called his miracles. He applied a power upon them that exists in the realm beyond the earth plane, the power of Spirit, of which they are but expressions, the scope of which we mortals are too dull to comprehend. It is only through a realization of the spirit power within us that we can come upon an apprehension of the powers exercised by Jesus.
“All power is given to me in heaven and on earth,” said Jesus. The power in heaven is the power of Spirit. Heaven is the home of order and harmony and it is not located on a distant planet but in the heart of man. “The kingdom of heaven is within you,” Jesus said.
“If a man love me,” said Jesus, “he will keep my words and the Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our abode in him.”
Here is the whole secret of our relation to God, to the laws of life and to membership in the kingdom. If we can but let this truth sink into us and come into complete possession of our consciousness, we have the power to overcome ourselves and the world.
This is the formula for spiritual power, for rising above limitations of the flesh, for entering into heaven,–not at some remote time, but now, today, this very hour. In the Christ consciousness that we can arouse in ourselves, which is our primal gift, we have life eternal. “I am come that you may have life and that you may have it more abundantly.” “God does not will the death of a sinner but that he be converted and live.” We are to be converted in mind, in thought, and we are to live a life rich with health and abundance, and this is the will of God, the Father of all of us, who begot us in love and who watches over and protects us even when we think we are far from Him.
Millions of people today believe that the diseases they are afflicted with are a punishment sent by God for offenses against Him or as a means of chastening them to a more spiritual state, or of disciplining them for the good of their souls. The wonderful power of healing has not only fallen into disuse, but the teachers of Christianity have so far departed from the truth as to declare that God has brought disease upon its poor victims as a mark of His displeasure. How far have they gotten away from a true conception of the all-embracing love of the Father! The results of our own errors attributed to Him who is Love itself–Love in such super form that we cannot even imagine it! If God sends disease to us as a mark of His displeasure or as a method of discipline, surely Jesus would not have healed the sick and banished disease–he would not have interfered with his Father’s will or set aside his Father’s discipline, nor would he have passed this healing power on to his disciples and followers–he would not have shown that disease is a mortal failure to be overcome with spiritual renewment.
There is truth in the observation that the Christ principle can do more for us with Christ as the Comforter than Jesus himself could do in the flesh. The record of the sayings of Jesus is full with promise of the power he would give us after he had gone to the Father and come again as the Comforter, or the Spirit that would recall to us all that he had said, and that in union with the Father would dwell within the hearts of those who love him and keep his words. There is to be assumed, therefore, an immense desire on the part of the Christ to come to us and manifest himself through us, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.
We can therefore not only have no more doubt of our power to unify ourselves with Christ than that we can have of becoming a guest at a feast to which we have had a formal invitation. There is in fact through all the utterances of Jesus a note of pleading, a manifestation of utter tenderness and love, that requires hard-heartedness to resist.
We cannot promise to you that if you open your mind and heart to the Christ pleading for entrance you will have power from on high to heal your diseases and to heal those of others also. We can only assure you that this promise is made to you by Jesus, who said that heaven and earth would pass away but his word would not pass away. No promise is more sacred, none can be more certainly relied upon. The power employed by Jesus is seeking to diffuse itself through all human souls as their highest reach of mental energy and attainment. The Light of the World is ever ready to pour its beams into our darkened existence if we are willing to receive it, as it has poured itself into the hearts and minds of the God-inspired men of all times. But it has an added brilliancy and effectiveness in the spirit developed by and through the Christ. If we would consent, this spirit will arise in us “with healing on its wings,” and carry us forward into the paths of mortal well-being and spiritual illumination.
PRACTICE IN DIVINE SCIENCE
Methods Recommended for Putting Into Daily Application
Builder and maker, Thou, of houses not made with hands?
What, have fear and change from Thee who are ever the same,
Doubt that Thy power can fill the heart that Thy power expands?
There shall never be one lost good; what was shall live as before;
The evil is null, is naught, is silence implying sound;
What was good shall be good, with for evil so much good more;
On the earth the broken arcs; in the heaven a perfect round.”
Golden Grains
“Love glorifies the common air; it clothes with light the mountain bare, and shows the heavens all shining there.”
(Memorize and Repeat Often)
Pages 177 to 187 of the “Astor Lectures.” [Online at this website.]
DAILY AFFIRMATIONS
Health, Prosperity, Protection
Health
The order and Harmony of the Christ Consciousness, established in me throughout all eternity, is expressing itself now as perfect Health.
The vitalizing energy of the Holy Spirit is circulating freely through every artery of my being, strengthening and invigorating me.
That Omnipresent Opulence which is God is now expressing Itself in and through me in terms of Unlimited Abundance.
The Lord, the everlasting Truth, Sustains me; Divine Love alone governs me, and I reflect its government, in Peace, Power, Prosperity, Perfection of Mind and Body.
2. Were the healings of Jesus miraculous?
3. What did the churches do and what are we recapturing?
4. What are the spiritual means and what did Jesus promise to us?
5. What did Jesus heal people of besides disease? Did he give us his power?
6. Is sickness or disease a visitation from God?
7. Are the promises of Jesus made to us as well as to those whom he personally addressed?
The Murray Course in Divine Science
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