Christ and Christmas by Mary Baker Eddy

The Christmas season is one in which Christian Scientists, like all Christian people, contemplate with renewed reverence the events which heralded the advent of Christ Jesus. Ask anyone who has been healed in Christian Science, and he will say that his healing came with the dawn of the Christ in his thought. And he will say usually that he found the Christ by courageously going through the night with face turned toward the light. And this Christ, which has roused him from the dream of life in matter, is defined by Mrs. Eddy in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 583) as "the divine manifestation of God, which comes to the flesh to destroy incarnate error."

The understanding of the impersonal nature of the Christ does not take away from the recognition we have of the work of the man Jesus, whom we regard as our Way-shower, and who earned for himself the title of Jesus the Christ, but it adds to our appreciation of the magnitude of his life and work. It helps us to enjoy the beauty and the significance of the story of his birth and life.

The Bible gives us two accounts of his birth, and only two. One, written by Matthew, poetically describes the three Wisemen from the East, who in the blackness of the night followed the light of the star to where the Christ-child lay, upon whom they bestowed their costly gifts. It is significant that the Wisemen did not hesitate to go down on their knees in the presence of the babe.

The other account, by Luke, tells of shepherds near Bethlehem hearing a joyous angel chorus and coming to the manger. In Matthew's account there are no shepherds and no manger; in Luke's account, no Magi. But both, taken together, give the complete story and illustrate the universality of the Christ, touching alike the hearts of shepherds and Wisemen; without geographic boundary, reaching the hearts of the learned and the simple folk. Luke's account tells of eager expectancy, immediate and joyous recognition of the Messiah by Simeon and Anna in the temple; Matthew tells of the operation of evil or animal magnetism, the slaughter of innocent Hebrew children as Herod sought to kill what could not be killed. Matthew tells how wisdom revealed to the Magi the origin and nature of the babe, and how they should protect it from the sinister purpose of evil. He describes their secret journey homeward after their warning in a dream not to return to Herod. He tells of Mary taking the young child to Egypt, following Joseph's warnings, thus circumventing the calculations of the carnal mind.

Like the Magi of old, we too have become custodians of the precious legacy of the Christ, Truth—Christian Science—and under divine wisdom are guided in the protection of our understanding from the sinister purposes of evil. Through divine inspiration we are enabled to anticipate and to render powerless the machinations of animal magnetism or the carnal mind. We learn to walk the protected way, a way unknown to evil, a way that only Love can teach us, only Love can see, and only Love can prove.

In Luke's Gospel the angel message came in song, spontaneously, promising "on earth peace, good will toward men." A wise man of an earlier period had entertained the same angelic thought and had written it down as a way of life: "The work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance for ever."

The two accounts of Jesus' birth have a deep significance for us today as Christian Science restates Jesus' teachings to a twentieth-century world. The promise of peace on earth has always been coupled with good will to men, with universal love. There is no way to arrive at peace but to acknowledge for all men the truth we claim for ourselves; there is no other way to heal the sick; there is no other way to be saved. Peace comes to our hearts as we achieve the attitude that characterized Christ Jesus, that gracious detachment which enabled him to hate iniquity while pitying the evildoer and seeking his salvation.

The understanding of Christian Science—the full and final revelation of the Christ, Truth, to this age and to all people, brought to us by our God-inspired Leader, Mrs. Eddy, and given to us in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures"—comes to some as the revelation came to the simple shepherds, through joyous inspiration; to others, coping with subtle forms of error, it comes as a scientific explanation of the nothingness of matter or error, precipitating the battle with the carnal mind which ends in victory for Truth. But always it comes in the way described in "Christ and Christmas":

Referring to the rule of the Christ, Truth, in the heavenly city, John writes, "And the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it: and the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honour into it."

Copyright, 1943, by The Christian Science Publishing Society, One, Norway Street, Boston 15, Massachusetts. Entered at Boston post office as second-class matter. Acceptance for mailing at a special rate of postage provided for in section 1103, Act of October 3, 1917, authorized on July 11, 1918. Published every Saturday.