Marco Polo says that in his travels he came to a village in Persia whose inhabitants claimed it to be the starting point of the Wisemen's journey. According to the villagers' tale, there were three Wisemen: a young man, a middle-aged man, and an older man. They set out together to find the promised Saviour, but on reaching their destination, they went in separately. The young man found a young Saviour, and each of the others found the Saviour to be of his own age. Later, when they went in together, they saw the babe Jesus.
This fanciful tale has a point: the Christ, the impersonal Saviour from all that is antagonistic to well-being and joy in living, is available to all men at all times— available to each according to his need and at the point where that need arises. When we are in trouble from sin or sickness, or when we seek progress, or when we want to use more fully the capacities we know are in us, are we wise enough to look outside our personal characteristics and ordinary abilities for the help we need?
A small boy was trying to lift a large stone. His father came by and asked, "Son, are you using all your strength?" The boy answered that he was, but the father replied: "No, you are not. You have not asked me to help." Are we wise enough to require of ourselves reliance upon a strength not our own?
Reliance upon the Christ is submission to the way of life which Jesus illustrated. Our love for the master Christian is expressed not in emotionalism concerning a babe in a manger but in obedience to the things Jesus taught. He said (John 14:15), "If ye love me, keep my commandments." The attraction of the star illustrated a direct approach to Christly light. Jesus explained and exemplified the qualities of thought that lead directly to the unfoldment of the Christ-idea in human consciousness. His Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5-7) summarizes his explanations.
Christmas, then, reminds us that we should honor the Bethlehem babe by following the teachings of the Galilean prophet, Christ Jesus. The frenzied buying and selling, the giving and receiving of material things, do no honor to the babe. The bedlam of the marketplace, the noise of the boisterous Christmas party, and the pride of possessions do not imitate the quiet and humble splendor which the Wisemen found at the end of their enlightened search. The real purpose of Christmas goes deeper, is more intimate, and touches more radically our way of life.
Mary Baker Eddy writes (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 262): "I love to observe Christmas in quietude, humility, benevolence, charity, letting good will towards man, eloquent silence, prayer, and praise express my conception of Truth's appearing. The splendor of this nativity of Christ reveals infinite meanings and gives manifold blessings."
The Master summed up the infinite meanings of his ministry in these words (Matt. 22:37, 39): "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God. . . . Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." We do not enter full-fledged upon our ministry of Christliness. Good first appears to thought in embryo. We put on humility and purity of thought, and we hunger and thirst after righteousness and the like, not suddenly, not without a struggle, not without defeats and victories. But like the Wisemen, we learn to see promise in the temporary darkness; we too have our star in the East. The Christianization of our thoughts, motives, and acts is the development of an insight that sees, both in ourselves and in our neighbors, promise where the materially obvious is unpromising.
Man is the child of God, the pure and perfect image of good. Like the Wisemen who saw in the babe evidence of good far beyond the evidence before the senses, Jesus recognized the appearing of God's ideal man where there seemed to be a leper, a lunatic, a blind man, or a man with palsy. The recognition of spiritual good that healed the leper, cured the insane, restored sight to the blind, and lifted the palsied to freedom and joy in living evidences the healing Christ.
The gifts the Wisemen brought to the babe Jesus and the gifts we give in the right spirit at Christmas time are symbols of the Christly attitude, which looks deep into reality and pays homage to the appearing of the true idea of manhood, made in God's likeness. For instance, it is a true love for ourselves and for our neighbors, a true Christmas gift, to recognize the appearing of the Christ-idea in the deep yearning for righteousness, for understanding, for fulfillment, that is hardly hidden in the consciousness of the most arrogant, self-willed, and even degraded person. Even if one feels that he is of no account or that another is of no account, he can look deep and see a right desire, an earnest yearning to do better, an inherent feeling for purity and love. This is an evidence of the Christ. The wise will look for it and honor it. An eminent statesman once explained in these words his success in dealing with others: "I never judge anyone until I discover what he would like to be as well as what he is."
In every human consciousness there is good in embryo, health in embryo, love and joy and success in embryo. The frustrated, unhappy, and cantankerous mortal may seem to hide his good under a bushel basket of error, but Christmas reminds us that the materialism of the age hid from all but a very few the wondrous story of Bethlehem, and yet the Wisemen discovered it. The babe represented only a promise of good things to come; but the promise was wonderful, and the Wisemen paid it homage.
"Lo, the star, which they saw in the east, went before them, till it came and stood over where the young child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy" (Matt. 2:9, 10). There is no greater joy and no better way of celebrating this recurring season than in the habitual struggle, the wonderful struggle, to seek and find and pay homage to the Christliness inherent in each individual. Strength, progress, fulfillment, and love need not remain in embryo, because the Christ is here. This is the lesson of the hour.
In "Miscellaneous Writings" Mrs. Eddy says (p. 320), "The star that looked lovingly down on the manger of our Lord, lends its resplendent light to this hour: the light of Truth, to cheer, guide, and bless man as he reaches forth for the infant idea of divine perfection dawning upon human imperfection,—that calms man's fears, bears his burdens, beckons him on to Truth and Love and the sweet immunity these bring from sin, sickness, and death."
