There is sure to come a time in the experience of each and every individual when a ray of spiritual Truth appears, and human consciousness is so touched with the message of the Christ that it begins in some degree to recognize the meaning of a present and living Saviour. Thought turns spontaneously to the light, and hope is stimulated with the bright prospect of that freedom and peace which personal sense and human systems deny. In this awakening to the higher meanings of human life and the divine influence of Spirit which subordinates the flesh, there occurs to human sense the birth of the Christ-idea.
At this most eventful moment, when for the first time one begins to appreciate the supremacy of Spirit and the meaning of man's divine son-ship, great care and attention is necessary to preserve that wholesome purity of thought in which alone the maturity and strength of the divine idea may be unfolded. In this regard many helpful lessons can be found in the lives of those who awakened to the meaning of the Christ-idea with the advent of the Christian era.
It is recorded that when the mother of Jesus first realized the significance of God's fatherhood and man's spiritual sonship, she "hid these things in her heart." Her joyful expectation of the Saviour was expressed in a psalm of praise to God alone, and uttered only in the presence of one who had like herself felt the power of Spirit to subordinate the flesh, and who was ready to give due homage to the divine idea which was to find expression in the man Jesus. Later on, when the human antagonism to the Christ made itself more evident, Mary is found, with her husband, taking the young child of promise out of the reach of those who opposed themselves to him, "into Egypt," where he was permitted to develop, unrecognized and unresisted by those about him.
