A mother comforts a tearful child by reminding him of her love and assuring him that all is well. Just so the Christ, the spiritual idea of God, is ever declaring God's love and comforting us with the assurance that all is well.

In the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy identifies "Christ" thus (p. 332): "Christ is the true idea voicing good, the divine message from God to men speaking to the human consciousness." As the child confidently accepts his mother's love and assurance and turns from his tears, so we must accept the comfort of the Christ, the divine manifestation of God, and respond to the call for action, the call for demonstration.

It is not enough merely to accept the comforting knowledge that man is the image and likeness of God, as stated in the first chapter of Genesis. We must reflect God, we must approximate that image and likeness, if health, happiness, and well-being are to become more and more apparent in our lives. In the chapter on Prayer in the textbook, our Leader writes (p. 3), "The Divine Being must be reflected by man, —else man is not the image and likeness of the patient, tender, and true, the One 'altogether lovely.' "

In times of mourning, whether there are tears of remorse for wrong done, tears of disappointment, or tears occasioned by a sense of pain or loss, the Christ is always at hand to comfort and bless.

The writer recalls with much gratitude her own struggle and victory over depressive moods that finally became deep and continuous depression, with accompanying physical problems. A Christian Science practitioner's loving explanation that man, the image and likeness of God, Spirit, is spiritual, hence free from depressive beliefs and governed by God alone, was an immediate comfort to the writer, and the gloom lifted.

The writer, however, for many years was swayed back and forth by every ill wind, alternating between periods of joy and sorrow, with little or no stability. This unhappy tendency to dualism eventually roused her thought to the necessity of using the comfort of the Christ to rout permanently the ill winds of selfishness, self-will, self-condemnation, self-pity, destructive criticism, hatred, and fear, those unbalancing characteristics which fostered and fed the inharmonious condition.

With the help of a practitioner she learned how to utilize the comfort of the Christ. To exercise the Christly qualities of love, humility, and unselfishness and to develop a growing affection for good required persistent daily effort on her part.

Much of the trouble stemmed from a deep-seated sense of persecution and of injustices believed to be perpetrated by others. As the writer became more and more conscious of the comfort of the Christ, she realized that one must deny identity, and thereby deny activity, to any sinful sense claiming to be man, whether the false belief comes in the guise of one's own self or that of another.

Jesus more than any other individual demonstrated the comfort of the Christ, and when he emerged from the tomb, he completely destroyed the lie of dualism. Then he laid down the human sense of self through a full realization of the Christ, his true selfhood, and disappeared from human view.

Prior to this, however, he patiently and persistently demonstrated the power of the Christ to comfort those in need and to destroy the beliefs of the flesh, a prime need before the belief of flesh itself can be overcome.

Rules for demonstrating the comfort of the Christ in individual experience are unfolded in the Christian Science textbook. Through obeying these rules we part company with wrong thinking as well as old habits. Since thinking and doing are inseparable, the changed thought empowers the new and better way of living.

In the chapter entitled "Genesis" in Science and Health, we read (p. 503), "Immortal and divine Mind presents the idea of God: first, in light; second, in reflection; third, in spiritual and immortal forms of beauty and goodness."

Let us be sure that when God unfolds to us the truth of being, which comes first as a comforting light or revelation, we remember also the second and third unfolding views mentioned in the passage just quoted. An understanding of the third stage, in which "spiritual and immortal forms of beauty and goodness" become apparent, is attained when we have prayerfully put into action or expressed the comfort of the Christ in our lives through knowing man as the reflection of the divine Mind.

Isaiah compared the love of God for His children to that of a mother when he attributed to God the statement (66:13), "As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you; and ye shall be comforted in Jerusalem." Comfort includes not only the understanding with which to overcome discord of every kind but the capacity to overcome it. "Refrain thy voice from weeping, and thine eyes from tears: for thy work shall be rewarded, saith the Lord" (Jer. 31:16).