IN writing of a Christmastide, Mary Baker Eddy referred to its coming in these words: "Again loved Christmas is here, full of divine benedictions and crowned with the dearest memories in human history—the earthly advent and nativity of our Lord and Master. At this happy season the veil of time springs aside at the touch of Love" (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 256). These are indeed exalted statements of the substance and meaning of Christmas, and of its effect on human consciousness. Estimated by the present tendency of the peoples throughout the Christian nations to set aside the things of time and sense during the Christmas season, and to express brotherly love and good will, is it not clear that "the touch of Love" does at this season yearly animate an increasing number, even that touch which moved the heavenly angels, centuries ago, to proclaim the object of the first Christmas?
How wonderfully does Mrs. Eddy characterize time as but a veil, and thus encourage her followers to see that, although it would dominate resolves, actions, conditions, prosperity, health, and human life, it is not substance, primordial reality, a governing power, but merely a veil. The deduction is that time should never be considered as the master of men, but as a convenient human system of measurement, shown to be secondary by the great outpouring of love and good will which banishes limitations and increases with every passing December. Typified by all these evidences, Christian Science is doing wonders for all peoples in unfolding the spiritual fact about Christmas, its deep import and significance. Mrs. Eddy's writings explain as no others can the great importance of the nativity of Jesus; and Christian Scientists are indeed grateful for her interpretations of Christmas, frequently studying them as an important body of facts in God's plan of salvation.
To understand Christmas in Christian Science we must know God as the living, all-powerful, divine Principle of all life, "who," as the Psalmist says, "forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases; who redeemeth thy life from destruction; who crowneth thee with lovingkindness and tender mercies; . . . so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle's." When God is thus understood, Christmas becomes to us, indeed, far more than a date, an anniversary, a celebration. It may in some degree be further understood through the words of the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, who says (Miscellany, p. 260): "The basis of Christmas is love loving its enemies, returning good for evil, love that 'suffereth long, and is kind.' The true spirit of Christmas elevates medicine to Mind; it casts out evils, heals the sick, raises the dormant faculties, appeals to all conditions, and supplies every need of man." Has anyone now on earth ever yet sounded the depths of the "spirit of Christmas" as stated in these words?
