Sometimes it can seem that long-acknowledged standards and axioms have dissipated and are no longer relevant in this modern society. For instance, the word Christ, traditionally a name most reverently associated with Jesus, is often used today as a common exclamation of astonishment, despair—or even worse.
Christ comes from the Greek word Christos, which means “anointed” and is equivalent to the Hebrew word rendered Messiah in English. Students of Christian Science know Christ, the divine title of Jesus, to signify “the divine manifestation of God, which comes to the flesh to destroy incarnate error,” as Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, spiritually defines it in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (p. 583). To those who have read Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in the Bible or experienced Christ’s charity and healing, this concept couldn’t be more relevant.
Mrs. Eddy identifies the following God-derived demands in Science and Health: “Christians are under as direct orders now, as they were then, to be Christlike, to possess the Christ-spirit, to follow the Christ-example, and to heal the sick as well as the sinning” (p. 138).
