Article December 25, 1937 Issue

"Tidings of great joy"

JEAN M. SNYDER

The angelic message to the shepherds on the Judean hills that night nineteen centuries ago, "Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, ... for unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord," proclaimed a wondrous gift to mankind from God. The birth of the Bethlehem babe heralded to mankind a fuller revelation of the infinite nature of God and His creation, man and the universe, which was to awaken them further from the curse of materialism and the stupor of a false sense of existence. Such was the advent of him who was to become for men the Saviour from wrong thinking, a redeemer from sin and sickness, and a deliverer from death.

Throughout the ages the coming of such a Messiah, or Saviour, had been longed for, and certain writers in the Old Testament had glimpsed the possibility of and had foretold such an event. Orthodox Christianity, however, has confused Jesus and the Christ. It has taught that the human Jesus was the Christ, and has worshiped him.

Christian Science shows the distinction between the personal Jesus and the impersonal Saviour, the Christ. It explains the mystery of the coincidence of the corporeal Jesus and the spiritual idea or Christ. The man Jesus was human. Christ is the emanation or expression of God, the eternal Son of God, existing forever as His spiritual idea. Jesus manifested the Christ, but the Christ was not born in or of matter. Nor is Christ, Truth, limited to Jesus and his day and age. Jesus presented a more spiritual concept of the ideal man than had ever been given before. As he grew to manhood, and manifested increasingly the power of Spirit, his divine nature rose clearer to human comprehension. Through his victories over the flesh he enabled mankind to discern man's divine nature. He brought to human vision the eternal man; the deathless, ageless, spiritual man, who coexists with God.

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