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The Bethlehem Star

From the December 1969 issue of The Christian Science Journal


Christendom loves the story of the Bethlehem star, which guided Wisemen from the East to the cradle of the infant Jesus. Being spiritually attuned to the times, the Wisemen glimpsed the light of Christ, Truth, which Jesus was destined to reveal later in its pure glory and power. The illumination that accompanied the appearing of the Messiah never left Christ Jesus, and he once declared, "I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life." John 8: 12; And this is true even today, for Jesus defined life by his own life and man as spiritual, the likeness of the one Maker.

The star that lighted Bethlehem's sky, the spiritual illumination that gives power to heal, has returned in the form of scientific Christianity, Christian Science. Mary Baker Eddy writes in the textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, "Led by a solitary star amid the darkness, the Magi of old foretold the Messiahship of Truth." And she asks, "Is the wise man of to day believed, when he beholds the light which heralds Christ's eternal dawn and describes its effulgence?"Science and Health, p. 95;

Many inquirers have acknowledged in a degree the logic and rightness of the theology set forth in the textbook, but have been unwilling to live its precepts. Consequently they have not experienced the tangible illumination of spiritual sense which convinces the humbly receptive heart that the Science Mrs. Eddy discovered is divine. Those who are illumined by the light of Christ know that the divine evidence is unmistakable, and they press toward the spiritual state of thought in which Christly illumination is permanent. They work to dispel the mental darkness of the multitudes to whom the presence of the light that gives dominion over the earth is still unknown.

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