OUR debt of gratitude and love to Christianity and its Founder is too great ever" to be adequately paid. Those whose lives have been fullest of good and worthy deeds feel that they have received so much and given so little that their salvation is by divine grace and not by personal merit. We have not even begun to appreciate all that God means to us, and all that Christ and historical Christianity have done for us, until we desire and work to become Christlike — that is, Godlike — in thought, words, and deeds. It is only by emulating the example of Christ Jesus — by loving, trusting, and obeying God, and by loving and serving mankind as he did — that we express true love for him as well as for his life-motive and work.
Nevertheless, everything that makes Christianity and its Founder better understood and loved; everything that makes Christianity more simple, universal, practical, and vital; everything that honors God and blesses mankind not only glorifies the life and teachings of the personal Jesus, but is an assertion of universal Christianity and an enrichment of historical Christianity. The purpose of this paper is to point out some of the ways in which Christian Science makes a contribution to historical Christianity, and by historical Christianity we mean the assertion and manifestation of the eternal Christ, not only in the character, words, and works of the individual Jesus and his immediate followers, but also in the whole of Christian history: and by the eternal Christ we mean the immanent and yet purely spiritual, allconsisting manifestation of God, the light which brightens and blesses every one coming into the world.
The Christianity of Jesus and his apostles, viewed in the light of Christian Science, is a necessary and vital union of religion and morality; of divine metaphysics and religious ethics; of God and the manifestations of God; of the divine Principle of all good and the activities of good. The metaphysics and ethics of Christianity are seen to be so inextricably bound together that they mutually determine each other. Christ's Christianity is also seen to be a healing as well as a redemptive religion. It is not a dogma, a ritualistic system of worship, or a sect, but universal practicable, and demonstrable truth. The forms of historical Christianity are seen to be Christian only in so far as they are true and as their adherents realize the freedom of the truth. All manifestations of God, good, in human history and in human experience, under whatever name they may appear, are likewise seen to be Christian; and all that worketh evil, though it be done in the name of God or even Christ himself, is seen to be anti-Christian. One is a Christian only as he is Christlike, only as he has the spirit and does the works of Christ.
