Editorial December 23, 1916 Issue

Mother and Child

William D. McCrackan

Christmas tells the story of a mother who loved so deeply and divinely that her babe became the Wayshower for the world. She drank of the pure well of that love undefiled which springs from the very rock of Truth itself. She found the great source from which is supplied the river of life, the gentle rain from heaven and the dew which jewels even human affection. This woman knew intuitively what the beloved disciple later put into writing, that "God is love," and her child therefore grew in wisdom and strength until he overcame the enemies of love and ascended triumphantly to the Father-Mother.

In the ascending scale of spiritual awakening the Christian Scientist seems to reach first the concept of the child rather than that of the mother. The conclusion is soon reached that man is the child of God, and with it comes the supreme sense of protection and the baptism of purification. This is the experience when human thought is led to "where the young child was," which Mrs. Eddy interprets on page 191 of Science and Health as leading "even to the birth of a newold idea, to the spiritual sense of being and of what Life includes." Later perhaps comes the perception of the motherhood of God to complete the concept of divine parentage, and with this the vision of the Apocalypse which symbolizes generic man by "a woman." Thereafter a new mantle of tenderness and fearlessness clothes the advancing Christian and protects him from the sting of death.

Without love there can be no joy, no fruition, no song, no healing, no harmony, and no health. The Scientist soon learns that man's true career can only flourish in the atmosphere of love, just as the counterfeit Adam begins and ends in fear. The Scientist recognizes that his treatments must leave his patients with love; that his mornings dawn in its effulgence, and his twilights are tremulous with its beams. He learns that without love he cannot face the world, the flesh, and the devil, neither the condemnations of the Pharisees nor the subtleties of treachery.

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