IN the prophecy of Isaiah we read, "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts." It is generally supposed that every event in the career of Christ Jesus is related to our salvation, excepting his immaculate conception; but in the light of Christian Science we find that the fact of man's immaculate origin and nature, as humanly revealed through Christ Jesus, is the very keynote of being, the corner-stone and foundation upon which each of us, as did Jesus, must base and build all our thought and demonstration. It is necessary to begin aright in order to end aright. The two points upon the horizon of human history at which Christ Jesus appeared and disappeared, are the links between earth and heaven, the Jacob's ladder up which, step by step, humanity passes above and out of itself and all its false beliefs, into the unbroken harmony of spiritual being.
The science of the immaculate conception relates to your being, to my being, to all real being, and is manifested, to a degree, in every demonstration of Christian healing. The Nicodemus of to-day may find these things hard to understand, but not so the true Christian. Webster gives the following definitions, which wonderfully illumine our premise and aid us in reaching a logical and practical conclusion: "Immaculate: Without stain or blemish; spotless; undefiled; clean, pure." "Conceive: To apprehend by reason or imagination; to take into the mind; to know; to comprehend; to understand." "Conception: The formation in the mind of an image, idea, or notion; apprehension; the state of being conceived; beginnings."
The four Gospels, like the petals of a splendid rose, unfold, in orderly process, the spiritual nature and origin of Christ Jesus, and its peculiar significance in relation to humanity. Matthew the Galilean, the friend and follower of Jesus, begins his Gospel thus: "The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham." Then he gives us in full, from his store of knowledge, the genealogy from Abraham to Joseph. As descent was reckoned through the males of the family, Joseph is mentioned therein rather than Mary, but as Joseph and Mary were cousins through the same descent, the record holds good. Matthew then traces, together with the prophecies relating thereto, the boyhood of Jesus, from his birth in Bethlehem to the flight into Egypt, and then to the return of the little family into Galilee, their original home; and so on to the end of Jesus' ministry. All the while, however, Matthew never loses sight of the son of David until the ascension.
