With uncompromising clarity Mary Baker Eddy has proclaimed to the world the revolutionary and redemptive meaning of Christmas. She writes in "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" (p. 257), "To the awakened consciousness, the Bethlehem babe has left his swaddling-clothes (material environments) for the form and comeliness of the divine ideal, which has passed from a corporeal to the spiritual sense of Christ and is winning the heart of humanity with ineffable tenderness." And she continues significantly, "To-day the Christ is, more than ever before, 'the way, the truth, and the life,'—'which lighteth every man that cometh into the world,' healing all sorrow, sickness, and sin."

For centuries the Christian world has celebrated the birth of the Saviour, who ushered in the Christian era. The simple but glorious story of the shepherds watching their flocks and beholding the glory of the Lord has lost none of its beauty or its profound spiritual message over the years. The world had waited long for the Messiah, and it was therefore a momentous occasion when the angel of the Lord gave the shepherds assurance that the Saviour had really come.

In the matchless words of Luke (2:10, 11): "The angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord." And Luke adds that when they heard the heavenly chorus they made haste and came to where the young child was.

From early boyhood Jesus was convinced of his divinely appointed mission. He early recognized himself as the Son of God and his only selfhood as inseparable from the Christ. His three years of historic ministry, as recorded in the Gospels, reveal that his deeds were firmly rooted in his acknowledgment of his Messiahship. It was his understanding of his true relationship to God and the power of the Christ that enabled him to heal the paralyzed, the deaf, dumb, blind, leprous, epileptic, demoniac, sensual, sinner; to raise the dead, annihilate space, walk on the water, and multiply the fishes and barley loaves to feed the multitude.

But during the centuries that followed, the deep spiritual import of his birth, career, and mighty works was obscured. It became hidden by the materialistic dogma of darkened human consciousness that lost sight of the Christ and resulted in worship of the personality of the human Jesus. Not until the light of Christ, Truth, illumined the consciousness of Mary Baker Eddy did the true spiritual significance of Christmas become understood.

By means of the teaching and practice of Christian Science this healing Christ-power is again being brought into the daily experience of humanity. Every activity of the Church of Christ, Scientist, is dedicated to precisely this purpose. As a result, for the first time since the days of Jesus and the early Christian healers, the Christ as the activity of God is being recognized, not as the monopoly of Jesus, but as ever present and always functioning, imparting the unity and oneness of God and His spiritual idea, man.

The traditional celebration of Christmas as focused on the birth of Jesus has overlooked the spiritual import of his true selfhood as one with the Christ. With the full power of divine illumination Christian Science is disclosing Christmas in a new light, whereby the Christ, that same potent influence demonstrated by the Master, heals, regenerates, and reforms.

With their understanding of the potency and regenerative influence of the Christ, so urgently needed to break the error of the world, Christian Scientists are aware that they possess the gift of gifts, which is theirs to share with all mankind. That gift is the revelation of the means for permanently healing mankind of all suspicion and aggression and for establishing the kingdom of heaven on earth.

In view of this, is it not the duty of each Christian Scientist to spiritualize his thinking and attain the consciousness of Truth which heals? Christian Scientists, as Mrs. Eddy recommends in the Manual of The Mother Church, are to heal the sick quickly and wholly. This cannot be done unless one has glimpsed the Christ, which reveals man as God's image and likeness, not as material but as spiritual reflection. Healing of physical difficulties is the bugle call that awakens the slumbering thought of the world. Such healing rouses human consciousness to see that the Christ demands the eradication of all sin, envy, greed, jealousy, resentment, hatred, malice, suspicion, animality, and every other lie of the carnal mind.

When Jesus was challenged as to his right to claim the Messiahship, it is significant that he turned to Biblical prophecy and read these words from Isaiah: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord" (Luke 4:18, 19). And then he added simply, "This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears." He referred his followers to his works, and by these alone he was ready to be judged. Herein lies the challenge to every Christian Scientist to prove by doing the works which Jesus did that Christian Science is indeed the Comforter that he promised should come in his name.

Healing is the outcome of the Christ uplifting and transforming human consciousness. Christian Scientists must recognize and exemplify the twofold nature of Christ Jesus—the divinity of the Christ expressed in Jesus' humanity to men. They must possess the universal love which is the reflection of the divine Father-Mother Love. Spiritual illumination lifts thought above the material pressure of world belief, frustration, discord, fear, and pain. Purification of our own consciousness will bring the light of Christ into our own daily experience and help us to bring the true Christmas message of hope and comfort to the millions who need the healing touch of divine Love. As the mist of materiality is dispelled, "on earth peace, good will toward men" will be realized.

The Christian Scientist recognizes that he can only celebrate Christmas by gaining more of the Christ-spirit. When the first gleam of the Christly light enters consciousness, this is the "blest Christmas morn" spoken of by Mrs. Eddy (Poems, p. 29), the dawn of spiritual illumination for the heart touched by God's tender love. Here Mrs. Eddy writes:

The understanding of the Christ-idea destroys the limited concept of mortals and replaces materialism with the knowledge that man is God's beloved son and is right now, because of his divine inheritance, in possession of every good and perfect gift. The activity of the Christ in consciousness replaces material concepts with spiritual ideas and brotherly love. It inevitably blesses the individual, enriches his home, his business, and the world at large.

Our faithful Leader, who braved every storm, overcame every hatred, and withstood all the attacks of error, kept the light of Christmas morn continually before her. She lovingly assures us that the long night of materialism is drawing to a close, that the birth of Truth in consciousness, the dawn of divine Love, is breaking over the earth, awakening humanity to the all-encircling, all-embracing illumination of divine Love.

Ignoring error is no part of Christliness. In the light of Truth we must recognize error for what it is—falsity, unreality, nothingness— and specifically replace every evil suggestion with the spiritual idea of Truth. Let us, not only at Christ-mastide but every day, celebrate in our consciousness the Christly illumination of Spirit. Enlarging faith and awakening courage will break the gloom of matter and evil and carry to suffering humanity the eternal presence of the Christ, liberating, purifying, uplifting, and regenerating.

The Christ-road leads to the open gateway for mankind's redemption. It is the only way humanity can find permanent peace and joy. Too long has mere formalism usurped the birth of the Christ, Truth, in consciousness. Let us today, as loyal followers of this faithful messenger of the second coming of the Christ, be more zealous in obeying the spiritual, exalted call, "Blest Christmas morn," which is, in the words of the Apostle Paul (Col. 1:27), "Christ in you, the hope of glory."

Our beloved Leader made plain what the approach of Christian Scientists should be to Christmas when she wrote as follows (Miscellany, p. 262): "I celebrate Christmas with my soul, my spiritual sense, and so commemorate the entrance into human understanding of the Christ conceived of Spirit, of God and not of a woman—as the birth of Truth, the dawn of divine Love breaking upon the gloom of matter and evil with the glory of infinite being."