All Christendom celebrates the birth of the child Jesus. But the eternal Christ he lived to represent was never born. The coming of Christ marks advancing states and stages of human thought as it wakens from the mortal dream of temporal, material existence and becomes conscious of man as God's immortal, spiritual son. This awakening, wonderfully furthered by Christian Science, saves mankind from the pains and sins and disasters that beset them.

While the Christian Scientist loves Christmas Day with its reminder of an event so important to human liberation from all that is false, he knows that the birth of Christliness in his own nature is the nativity he must celebrate every day. This he does by ripening his heart to the spirit and presence of Christ, Truth, God's ideal. The Scientist knows that he must embody the power of Truth and develop that power until it becomes a strong, healing force in the world. When the Christ is known, loved, and lived, scientific healing takes place.

In "Miscellaneous Writings" in her answer to the question, "How is the healing done in Christian Science?" Mary Baker Eddy includes these words (pp. 96, 97): "It is Christ come to destroy the power of the flesh; it is Truth over error; that understood, gives man ability to rise above the evidence of the senses, take hold of the eternal energies of Truth, and destroy mortal discord with immortal harmony,— the grand verities of being."

As in the coming of light to darkness, the power and energy of the Christ-spirit break through any mental gloom, whatever its density, and reveal God's man in the purity and splendor of his deathless identity.

Explaining his demonstration of the divine energy that heals, Christ Jesus said (John 5:30),"I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me." God's will is the divine energy which man in Christ embodies, and there is no limit to that energy. If healing is slow, a more dynamic expression of the Father's will must be demonstrated by both practitioner and patient. Each must love more, be more alert, more intelligent, more unselfed. This increase of spirituality will mark the coming of Christ to human consciousness; it will obliterate the aggressive suggestions of spiritual inertia; it will establish right action.

Only purity that is clearer and finer than individual morality can make way for the coming of the Christ-power. Moral integrity is God-impelled and essential for preparing human thought to yield to the presence and action of the Christ. But absolute spiritual consciousness is demonstrated as the Christ becomes more fully known. This consciousness is higher than the moral state in which two forces, good and evil, seem to be in conflict; it recognizes only the existence of the spiritually real.

During the many centuries of the moral teaching and effort of Christianity, Christians have believed strongly in two powers. They have not denied the reality of evil and matter, but have struggled with materialism and its consequences as actualities. The purity which scientific Christianity demands—the purity which witnesses to the coming of Christ—acknowledges only the presence and allness of divine Love. Neither matter nor sin, neither limitation of good nor sickness, is cognized by the real consciousness, which is the individual reflection of Mind.

We lose the true meaning of Christmas if we celebrate the birth of the humanly personal Jesus without increasing our expression of the divine nature and its power, which Jesus portrayed. Now through the Science of Christ we are free to explore the depths and possibilities of Christliness that lie concealed in our real, spiritual identity. Our recognition of spiritual ideas and qualities may seem to us to be a coming of the Christ from without, but actually any Christliness we manifest is evidence of the awakening to our true and immortal character within us.

In real identity no quality of Christ is missing. Whatever is needed for one to demonstrate perfection is present to be known and used. Neither can any right quality be taken out of this identity. In Science each individual is a perfect and complete idea of divine Mind. Man cannot wander away from the Christly nature with which Mind endows him. If one seems to wander from perfection in a maze of directionless paths of evil, his wandering is part of the illusion that he is a mortal. When we deny the belief that man is a mortal, lacking spiritual qualities, and realize man's true identity as the spiritual likeness of God, the truth restores the rightful character of the wandering individual, and evil instincts give place to his legitimate, Christly selfhood.

The coming of Christ to consciousness is answered prayer, for true prayer reveals the reality of man, of his health, his experiences, his activities, and his relationships. Thus Christ destroys false beliefs.

The more Christly one becomes, the less labored his prayerful effort to overcome the various phases of error that confront him. Established firmly in his understanding that God's Christ is eternally present and that every individual exists within this holy presence, one is able to throw spiritual illumination on the shadows of mortal belief and thus dispel them.

If we fulfill our latent Christly capabilities, we shall merit the words of Jesus (Matt. 5:14), "Ye are the light of the world." And we shall be celebrating Christmas in a way that is worthy of our Saviour.

Helen Wood Bauman