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IN SUMMARY OF CHRIST AND
CHRISTMAS
We have come to the end of the Alice Orgain and Hanna?
explanations of Mary Baker Eddy's Christ and Christmas. We have seen
that these eleven pictures, as Mrs. Eddy informs us, tell the story of her
life. It is the story of the Second Coming of the Christ--the fulfilling of
Christ Jesus' prophecy and promise of the "Comforter" that would come and
reveal all that the people in Jesus' time, two thousand years ago, were not
ready for, as they were just coming out of mythology.
Each picture shows that we must learn the truth about
ourselves as Jesus and Mrs. Eddy taught and demonstrated. When "the kingdom of
God is within you," when it is your own true Mind, we can see why Jesus could
teach, "I and the Father [Mind, the divine Principle, Love] are one." Learning
that "the kingdom of God is within" us--is our own right Mind, our true
consciousness--gives us power with unlimited potential. As Mrs. Eddy writes,
"Know then that you have sovereign power to think and act rightly" (Pul.
3:7).
We are told that each picture in Christ and
Christmas represents a part of Mary Baker Eddy's life and of her great
revelation of good's allness, and error's unreality.
In the first picture we see the "star of
Bethlehem," which is really "the star of Boston." (See Mis. 320.) The
picture presents the chaotic panorama of Woman's mission to lift up
Christianity to oneness with Science. Christianity is typed by man, and Science
is typed by Woman. In this first picture the darkness is being scattered as the
"star looks down upon the long night of materialism--material religion,
material medicine, a material world; and it shines as of yore, though it
'shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.' But the day will
dawn and the daystar will appear, lighting the gloom, guiding the steps of
progress from molecule outward and upward in the scale of being" (Mis.
110). Woman is Science, the revelation with whom its revelator is one.
The second picture presents woman being
raised from theological beliefs, beliefs called Christianity. She (Mary Baker
Eddy) is being lifted to newness of light in Spirit in response to the call
from the kingdom of God active within her consciousness since she was a
child.
"Eventually all must learn that good alone is real and
nothing inharmonious can enter being, for Life is God [infinite good]. Sometime
we shall learn how Spirit, the great architect, has created men and women in
Science. We ought to weary of the fleeting and false, and to cherish nothing
which hinders our highest selfhood" (S&H 68:4).
The third picture presents the woman,
Mary Baker Eddy, sharing her revelation with others. She had seen that humanity
can't escape eventually realizing its divinity. She said she saw the love of
God encircling the universe and man, filling all space; and that this divine
love so permeated her consciousness that she loved with Christ-like compassion
everything she saw. "This realization of divine Love called into expression
'the beauty of holiness, the perfection of being,' which healed and regenerated
all that turned to me for help" (DCC p. 224).
From this, Mrs. Eddy knew that the final understanding
that we are Spirit must come because under the microscope of Spirit matter
disappears. In the first and second editions of Science and Health Mrs. Eddy
wrote: "At present we know not what we are, but hereafter we shall be found
Love, Life and Truth, because we understand them."
The fourth picture presents the
crippling effects of renegade students. It shows the opposition of apathy to
the woman's vision. This apathy is occasioned by the tendency of the woman's
would-be followers to retain old forms and beliefs, and to merely worship the
new vision. Christianity must be seen as Science, for the new wine of Spirit
cannot be put into the old bottles of the letter without losing both.
Mary Baker Eddy's divine revelation--that evil is
unreal, and that man, being one with his Principle, is therefore free and
perfect--is destined to be universally understood and demonstrated. But before
this can happen, "the consciousness of corporeality, and whatever is connected
therewith, must be outgrown."
The fifth picture presents womanhood
rising above the limitations of church and looking for a vision higher than
that of the other witness, who is worshipping Christianity. This picture
"Christmas Morn" is the healing of the previous picture "Christmas Eve." Mrs.
Eddy in 1903 wrote a letter to some students in which she said, "May this dear
Christmas season be to you a Christ risen, a morn, the break of day. There is
nothing jubilant attached to the birth of a mortal--that suffers and pays the
penalty for his parent's misconception of man and of God's creation. But there
is joy unutterable in knowing that Christ [our true being] had no birth, and
that we may find in Christ, in the true sense of being, life apart from birth,
sorrow, sin and death. O may your eyes not be holden, but may you discern
spiritually what is our redeemer" (DCC, p. 128).
We must recognize Mrs. Eddy's life work as the Second
Witness. She brought the Second Coming of the Christ, and fulfilled Jesus'
promise and prophecy of the "Comforter," that would reveal all things, all
truth.
The sixth picture shows that woman had
found her vision in the God-crowned Woman in heaven who must bring forth her
own "man child" (manhood) as the truth of her own consciousness.
In a letter to Mr. Gilman, the artist, Mrs. Eddy wrote
him regarding this sixth picture:
"Do you know what you have done for yourself, for
mankind, for our Cause? No, you do not, perhaps, but I will tell you. You
illustrated and interpreted my life on the plate that you sent me."
Mrs. Eddy once stated, "I am the unresisting channel
through which Love shines with its full healing force."
As Elijah passed his mantle on to Elisha, so did Jesus
pass his robe on to Mary Baker Eddy, and with a double portion.
The seventh picture's Biblical verse
with its poem is a reference to Melchisedec, the priest of Salem, a forerunner
of the Christ idea. The true priest is Christ-likeness, the child-like and pure
in heart. This childlikeness is the complete opposite of Old Theology, which
for thousands of years has been dwelling in darkness, the darkness of false
manhood. Witness the dark clothing on the old man. The Bible is closed to this
old man. He cannot understand it except through the woman; and she is found in
her writings, as being read by the child. The true priesthood is attained to
the degree that we approximate the purity of thought of this little one, that
is, obtain an understanding of the woman's mission and light.
Mrs. Eddy was able to give us this Truth because, from
the time she was just a small child, purity, innocence, and inoffensiveness
were expressed in her in boundless measure; and the retention of this purity
enabled that consecrated one to give us Science and Health.
The eighth picture presents Mary Baker
Eddy knowing that "The Way, The Truth, the Life--His word--are HERE AND
NOW, as the poem says. "[Her] Christ's silent healing, heaven
heard, crowns the pale brow," means it causes error to disappear, to
fade out. Mrs. Eddy has told us that Christ and Christmas is the story
of her life. "The pictures refer not to personalities but present the type and
shadow of Truth's appearing in the womanhood as well as in the manhood of
God..."(Mis. 33:10).
The woman in this eighth picture knows that all good
is "HERE AND NOW." This picture tells of Mrs. Eddy's custom to
take an hour each evening to sit alone and work for the world--to know that
"all is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation." In this picture the
written word has yielded to the spiritual consciousness of it, just as when we
know the multiplication table, we can close the arithmetic book.
The ninth picture shows us the perfect
circle which denotes completeness. In Science and Health we read, "The Lamb's
wife presents the unity of male and female as no longer two wedded individuals,
but as two individual natures in one; and this compounded spiritual
individuality reflects God [infinite good] as Father-Mother, not
as a corporeal being" (S&H 577).
That statement of Mrs. Eddy's explains Revelation
21:22: "And I saw no temple therein," meaning I saw no mortal corporeal body
therein. Our true divine being is the temple, since "the kingdom of God is
within [us]"is our true Mind and consciousness. Mrs. Eddy said Jesus
demonstrated this "in his mighty, crowning, unparalleled, and triumphant exit
from the flesh"(S&H 117:21). An early worker said that "...when Mrs. Eddy
spoke of Christ Jesus it seemed as if time and space, the barrier of two
millenniums and two hemispheres, were swept away." The worker added that Mrs.
Eddy spoke at this time of her illustrated poem, Christ and Christmas.
It was evidently dear to her heart.
In this ninth picture Jesus' mission is finished. The
woman holds the scroll, the final and complete revelation of Truth to this age
and all ages, "CHRISTIAN SCIENCE."
"The truth in regard to your Leader heals the sick and
saves the sinner," Mrs. Eddy told Judge Septimus J. Hanna and Edward
Kimball.
The tenth picture tells us to get away
from sin. Woman [Science] knocks on the door of humanity, asking us to
"Get away from sin," "Leave its grasp." In this dark hour, true
womanhood pleads to be taken into the hearts of mankind. It wants a practical
life, changed by the touch of Love, our real Mind. Only a false sense of
things--illusion, hypnotic suggestion, or what Mrs. Eddy called animal
magnetism, keeps us from seeing what we really are as Mind, Spirit, Soul,
Principle, Life, Truth, Love, "the kingdom of God within [our
consciousness]."
The woman knocking at the portals of humanity is
clothed in the third degree. She is the spiritual idea, generic man.
This picture shows that the child-like thought
welcomes the truth.
Our Leader conquered all the lies that false beliefs
tell about us. Will we follow and do likewise?
The eleventh picture: Here we see the
Way, the Truth, and the Life. "You see the whole universe included in one
infinite Mind and reflected in the intelligent compound idea, image or
likeness, called man, showing forth the infinite divine Principle, Love, called
God [our own right Mind, "the kingdom of God within" us as our true
consciousness]man wedded to the Lamb, pledged to innocence, purity, perfection.
Then shall humanity have learned that 'they which shall be accounted worthy to
obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are
given in marriage: neither can they die any more: [even as 2x2=4 cannot die],
for they are equal unto the angels; and are the children of God [of Science]'"
(My. 269, Luke 20:35, 36). This, therefore, is Christ's plan of
salvation from the divorce that took place in the Adam dream.
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The choir invites any
member of the congregation who enjoys sinning to join the choir. |
Mary Baker Eddy's Residence in
Chestnut Hill.
Star of Boston book sections
Introduction | Part 1a |
Part 1b | Part 2 |
Part 3
Christ & Christmas
Pictures
1 |
2 | 3 |
4 | 5 |
6 | 7 |
8 | 9 |
10 | 11
Summary |
Conclusion |
