Editorial December 25, 1937 Issue

The Way-Shower and the Way

George Shaw Cook

In the recurring celebrations of Christmas the thought of Christendom in general centers on the birth of the human Jesus, rather than on the appearing to human consciousness of the ever-present divine Christ.

Christian Scientists gratefully accord Jesus of Nazareth the homage his unique position as the Way-shower for mankind deserves. However, they are increasingly desirous, as the years go by, to let their thought, even at Christmas time, expand into glorification of the Christ, or spiritual idea, which Jesus taught and demonstrated to be the way of salvation. They realize that it was this Christ, Truth, which made Jesus the anointed, the God-appointed Way-shower for mankind. Writing on page 26 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, says: "The Christ was the Spirit which Jesus implied in his own statements: 'I am the way, the truth, and the life;' 'I and my Father are one.' This Christ, or divinity of the man Jesus, was his divine nature, the godliness which animated him."

Christ Jesus stands out pre-eminently as the one who best understood and most perfectly demonstrated the divine nature. He took the steps of progress in his earthly ministry—from Bethlehem to Bethany—in obedience to the Christ, his true selfhood; and it was to this that he referred when he said, "I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life" (John 8:12). And his followers throughout the succeeding ages have proved in greater or lesser degree the truth of that inspired utterance.

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