Where is the Christ these days? To answer this question, we must understand what the Christ is. Mary Baker Eddy defines the Christ in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," thus (p. 583): "The divine manifestation of God, which comes to the flesh to destroy incarnate error." Jesus presented this spiritual ideal to the world, and the truth he understood healed men of sickness and sin. It fed them in the wilderness and on the shore of the Galilean sea. It cast out the evils of mortal thinking and raised the dead.
One meaning of the word "manifestation" is that which displays clearly and makes plain to thought. The Christ then is that which makes plain to the receptive thought the nature, law, and purpose of God, divine Spirit.
Our beloved Leader says in "Unity of Good" (p. 59), "Jesus came to earth; but the Christ (that is, the divine idea of the divine Principle which made heaven and earth) was never absent from the earth and heaven." Christian Scientists acknowledge only one Christ. It is the ever-present, true idea of God and man, and this idea has always been available to the spiritually receptive thought in every age.
