Article December 27, 1941 Issue

The Supreme Christmas Gift

JOHN RANDALL DUNN

A Christian Scientist once was called upon to participate in a Christmas party given for children at a certain institution, and after the distribution of gifts, was asked to address the little folks. In an effort to turn thought away from mere material gift giving, he asked the children to tell him what they considered the world's greatest Christmas gift. The answer was not forthcoming immediately, but, finally, it was agreed that the supreme gift was described in the third chapter of John's Gospel, verse 16: "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." The Scientist then asked what the only begotten Son, the Christ, did for the human family. He was a bit nonplussed to hear a chorus of juvenile voices announce with all the authority and solemnity of scholastic theology, "He came to die for us!" The Scientist then endeavored to leave with them the more glorious concept of the Master's —the understanding that he came to live for mankind, and to teach men how to live; to teach them how to subdue sickness and sadness, want and woe, as well as sin; and how to begin here and now to taste the harmony and joy of real being.

At this Christmas season, confronted with a picture of national and international upheaval, should not the man or woman striving for spiritual-mindedness pray that his consciousness may be a clear, clean windowpane through which the saving light of the Christ, Truth, may shine? Mary Baker Eddy writes on page 331 of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures": "Life, Truth, and Love constitute the triune Person called God,—that is, the triply divine Principle, Love. They represent a trinity in unity, three in one,—the same in essence, though multiform in office: God the Father-Mother; Christ the spiritual idea of sonship; divine Science or the Holy Comforter." The great gift which Love divine ever pours forth to all its children is "the spiritual idea of sonship," and it is the gift which humanity so sorely needs today. This is the gift which divine Science, the Comforter, reveals.

Here is a man or woman ravished with disease or pain and crying for relief. What is the primal need? The Christ, the consciousness of man's oneness with perfect, deathless Being, God, with painless Soul, and harmonious law. Here is a household where lack lifts its unlovely head. Again, the Christ, the only begotten Son or expression of illimitable Love, whose office is to give and give, comes to dispel the darkness of fear and limitation. Here is a family saddened by the loss of a loved one, or battling to save another from the mesmerism of sin and separation. Is not their only hope the coming to the human consciousness of the Christ, the saving idea of Love's completeness, of Life's deathlessness, and of Soul's infinite satisfaction? Here are warring, hating, self-willed, greedy, misunderstanding men and nations. Oh, how sadly do the wounded, battered affections need the healing balm of the Christ, the consciousness that there is in truth one Mind only, and that this Mind is Principle, unchanging good and mercy and law!

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