Articles

One Christmas morning some years ago, when I was pondering the significance of Christmas, I was struck by the following passage in an article entitled "The New Birth," to be found in "Miscellaneous Writings" by Mary Baker Eddy ( p. 18 ): "Thou shalt recognize thyself as God's spiritual child only, and the true man and true woman, the all-harmonious 'male and female,' as of spiritual origin, God's reflection,—thus as children of one common Parent,—wherein and whereby Father, Mother, and child are the divine Principle and divine idea, even the divine 'Us'—one in good, and good in One.

What a joy it is to cease the self-torture of hating our seeming enemies! Mary Baker Eddy says (Miscellaneous Writings, pp. 210, 211 ), "Love your enemies, or you will not lose them; and if you love them, you will help to reform them.

Obedience is a spiritual quality of man. It is the divine response of God's idea to the demands of Life and Love.

Jesus challenged the make-believe of the scribes and Pharisees; he tried to break down the barriers between Gentile and Jew at a moment when the Jews were hoping for a national revival in their challenge to the Roman Empire. The Master urged men to work out their own salvation, to learn to think for themselves instead of being mental salves to despotism, whether civil or ecclesiastical; and he demonstrated the allness of God and the nothingness of matter.

Everyone is concerned more or less with the position in which he finds himself. Men and nations alike seek to improve their present status.

Neither materia medica, chemistry, physics, nor any of the other so-called natural sciences, however useful to mankind they may be, can ever unfold the spiritual facts of body. All human theories ultimately fail, because they incorporate within their premises the basic error that God, Spirit, is not All—that matter, the supposititious opposite of Spirit, is real and substantial.

To him who understands something of the nature of God, it is clear that God never made a conspiracy. The divine Mind plans no evil for man or the universe.

When Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer of Christian Science and the Founder of the Church of Christ, Scientist, instituted the Wednesday testimony meetings, she provided in the order of service as given in the Manual of The Mother Church an opportunity for the giving of "experiences, testimonies, and remarks on Christian Science" ( p. 122 ).

While in exile on the Isle of Patmos, the spiritually-minded John received a vision of great significance. In the tenth chapter of the book of Revelation, which records the things John beheld in the realm of spiritual reality, it is stated that an angel appeared to him, holding "a little book open" in his hand and crying "with a loud voice, as when a lion roareth.

During times of seemingly great stress and disturbance in human affairs, whether they are personal, local, national, or international in their nature, it is the duty of every Christian Scientist to examine thought with a view to determining what misconceptions or prejudices may be contributing to the difficulty. An important question to be answered is.