These three terms were applied to the Master when the gospel stories were written and the epistolary letters sent to the Churches. Throughout the centuries which have passed since the days of the Manifestation, that One sent forth from the Father-Mother to manifest Him has been named and worshipped as Jesus Christ the Lord. That a great mistake was made is self-evident. Those who wrote the New Testament records became betrayers of one of the most beautiful and most sacred divine manifestations. That the Master was both Daysman and Redeemer, is true. He was essentially the vehicle of the Divine Mystery – the Lord of all Being, for the manifestation once more of the transcendent Love of the Father-Mother; and to recover and show forth the only true path by which the human Soul could travel if it would reach in high degree that sublimest of realizations known as the Christ-consciousness.

The Lord is never a man. Nor is Christ any man. In all the children of the Father-Mother lies latent potential Christhood, and even that realization known as oneness with the Father-Mother, or perfect atonement. The names given to the Master have other than personal signification, and can only be understood mystically.

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JESUS. This is a state of consciousness made manifest in the Way of Life. It touches the glorious love-principle, and reveals that love in sweetness, in gentleness, in tenderness, in noble thought, in beautiful desire, in lowly service. It begets compassion for all living things, and manifests it unto all Souls. It radiates pity, and throws its beautiful mantle over all who are needing help – the weak, the defenceless, the helpless, the dumb, the blind, the deaf, the maimed, the poor, the oppressed, the misunderstood, the misrepresented, the outcast, and even the creatures.

The Western world does not understand Jesushood. Through misunderstanding it, the schools have always misinterpreted it. Through misinterpretation on the part of the schools, the Church has misrepresented the meaning of the state. Jesus is a redeemer. But He redeems through a life that is redeemed. Jesushood is the life redeemed. He is the desire purified; the love-principle made beautiful till it seeketh not its own; the attributes healed, strengthened made serviceable, and consecrated to service. Jesushood is the Life of the Divine Love in manifestation through His beautiful children. In this sense the Master was Jesus. But the name He was known by was other than Jesus. He was a centre acting as the apex of a triangle through which the divine glory of love was broken, reflected, manifested. What was done through Him even unto His personal life, was impersonal in its nature. And it is to be accomplished through all those whom He was sent to find, namely, the elect ones, those who could understand such a life, rise into it and become the vehicles of this aspect of Divine manifestation and redemption. For Jesus is ever a redeemer. And all Souls who are in Jesushood are by their very state, and through all their ministry, redeemers.

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CHRIST. This is a state of Being. The Eternal Christ is the Lord of Glory, and is no man. But in every individuation of Eternal Being, there is the Divine Principle, and that Divine Principle is Christ. Christ in you is the glorious hope; by which is meant that the Divine Christ Principle is the prophecy of the very highest realization for the Being. Because of that Christ Principle the Being can become one with Christ, and know the exalted state of the Son of God, which is a state of most blessed consciousness.

In this sense the Master was Christ. He was not The Christ in the Absolute, but in that high state of Christhood which enabled Him to be one in and with the Absolute. He never claimed to be Christ any more than He claimed to be Jesus. But He knew He was in the states represented by both names, as was evidenced in the Teachings which He gave. Christ is the Radiance or Eternal Light of the Eternal Love. Christhood is the state in which that Love irradiates and fills the Being, and pours itself through the ministry and the life expressed by the term Jesus.

Christhood, therefore, is a glorious state unto which all Souls are called. It is the ultimate of their creation. For the elect ones, or elder children of the Kingdom, it is the transcendent realization possible unto them in this age. The Master’s chief mission in the days of the Manifestation, known as that of Jesus Christ the Lord, was to find those Souls and recall them out of the conditions into which they had gone down, through beautiful ministry to the children of this world who dwelt amidst the gross darkness, and help them back into that glorious degree of radiance from the Divine Presence.

The theological schools of all the churches have built their theories concerning the Master upon wrong premises, and have turned into a personal equation that which is absolutely soulic and divine. The result has been that the Western World, through all its religious institutions, has followed after an inverted picture, and has never been able to see the real image meant to be represented. It has followed, or thought it has followed, one who was the vehicle of the glorious unveiling of the meaning of Jesus Christ; but it has missed His meaning. It has missed the beautiful vision He gave. It has adored the man. Whilst doing this it has utterly failed to find the Holy Grail or Cup of Divine Life unto which He in His ministry called all Souls. The result has been that the sins of the Western world have not been blotted out. Nor has that world’s mind been healed, nor the life saved through the healing. Today, after more than eighteen centuries of the so-called Christian belief and worship, its redemption has now to begin^*. For the healing of the nations of the world is the great work to be accomplished in this age, and that healing must proceed till Jesus come. That means, till the world is made beautiful in all its ways in its ministries, in its loves, and in all its ambitions.

^*Note: these words were spoken in 1920. The Redemption has begun and is very much in evidence.

The churches should be the vehicles of this redemption; but they must first be themselves healed through being purified. They have yet to learn the meaning of compassion and pity, true self-denial, true self-sacrifice, beautiful purity, beautiful consecration to the Divine; for their feet must needs be washed. The ways of their going have still to be made beautiful. When they are, then the Light of Christ may find a true vehicle for its manifestation through their altars and ministries. In that day they will guide the peoples to the real living Mountains where cleansing and healing for all sin can be found. And they will then be in true apostolic succession, with all their outer phylacteries, beliefs, traditions, rituals, ceremonials, transmuted and illumined from the radiance of the Christ-Light upon the altar of Being. For an apostle is one who is sent, having acquired the power, through discipleship, to be the vehicle of divine ministry; and there is no other apostolic succession. The Holy Apostolate of God are those Souls who are full of the Power of His Love and the radiance of that Love, those whom He endows and sends forth as channels of divine ministry to Souls.

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THE LORD. The Lord is never a person. Nor is He to be regarded as an individual in the human sense. He is Perfect Being, and the manifestation in the Divine World of that most glorious and most holy mystery we name the Father-Mother. He is that Presence who filleth the sanctuaries of the Divine Heavens, and the Angelic Heavens, as an atmosphere and a radiance transcendent and ineffable. And He is also that Presence who filleth the sanctuary of the human being with that transcendent glory, when that one can rise to know Him through the estates of Jesushood and. Christhood. He giveth the atmosphere within the sanctuary. He Himself maketh the radiance that is the Light of Christ within. He Himself magnetically doth affect the love-principle until it is, in its response, even as His own Love, and maketh manifest in Jesushood. The Lord Himself dwelleth between the Cherubim where He unveileth His glory unto His child, as that one rises in consciousness into perfect oneness with Himself.

Therefore, as Jesushood is the crown of the beautiful Life, and Christhood is the radiant crown of Jesushood, so the Lord consciousness is the crown of the Christ Light.

The Master was in that state in which He knew the Lord, being one in that Presence. It was thus He knew the Father-Mother. His relationship was most intimate, most sacred. But though intimate in the sense that He had the living consciousness of that Holy Presence ever within Him when He spake of the Father-Mother it was in terms and tones the most reverent. For He was ever conscious that all He was of beauty and truth, all He had acquired of inward light and transcendent realization, all the power of the glory of the Kingdom of the Father-Mother that was broken through Him, were from and of the Father-Mother, and must ever be for Him alone. He, therefore, though in the high state of the Lord consciousness, never could have allowed His beautiful friends to speak of Him as the Lord Christ Jesus. He was in His own consciousness, and always in His address to His friends, ever the lowly servant of the Father-Mother.

Even as He Himself realized that sublimest consciousness, the indwelling of the Father-Mother, so did He call His most intimate and most beloved ones to seek that high estate; for it was to be their inheritance again.


From Life’s Mysteries Unveiled by John Todd Ferrier, pp 142-147.
© The Order of the Cross. First published in 1922.

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