In an illuminating Christmas Sermon contained in her book "Miscellaneous Writings" Mary Baker Eddy says (p. 164), "As the Wisemen grew in the understanding of Christ, the spiritual idea, it grew in favor with them." And she continues, "Their highest human concept of the man Jesus, that portrayed him as the only Son of God, the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and Truth, will become so magnified to human sense, by means of the lens of Science, as to reveal man collectively, as individually, to be the son of God."
This statement is of inestimable value to the Christian metaphysician because an active understanding of it and of God's government of man is potent to reduce to nothingness any conflict in human relationships, from two small children quarreling over a toy to a group of statesmen disagreeing at a conference table or to millions of mortals engaged in desperate warfare. As a mortal personality is seen to be a counterfeit of individual man, the immortal idea of God, so the government of one or of innumerable mortals by a supposititious mortal mind is but a counterfeit or perversion of the government of the infinitely individualized idea by the infinite divine Mind.
In the first chapter of Genesis the inspired writer sets forth the perfection and harmony of being as it eternally is from the standpoint of the creative divine Principle, God. There we read (verses 26, 27): "Let us make man in our image. ... So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them." This image and likeness of God, the "male and female," or "them," of His creating, whether considered individually or collectively, is truly the Son of God, the Christ, which the Wisemen at first faintly glimpsed at the wondrous appearing of God's highest earthly representative, the beloved babe of Nazareth.
