Books by Mary Baker Eddy

A CHRISTMAS SERMON
page 100

A CHRISTMAS SERMON

Delivered in Chickering Hall, Boston, Mass., on the
Sunday before Christmas, 1888

Subject: The Corporeal and Incorporeal Saviour

   Text: For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the
government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called
Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The
Prince of Peace. - Isaiah ix. 6.

   To the senses, Jesus was the son of man: in Science,
man is the son of God. The material senses could
not cognize the Christ, or Son of God: it was Jesus'
approximation to this state of being that made him the
Christ-Jesus, the Godlike, the anointed.
   The prophet whose words we have chosen for our
text, prophesied the appearing of this dual nature, as
both human and divinely endowed, the personal and the
impersonal Jesus.
   The only record of our Master as a public benefactor,
or personal Saviour, opens when he was thirty years of
age; owing in part, perhaps, to the Jewish law that none
should teach or preach in public under that age. Also,
it is natural to conclude that at this juncture he was
specially endowed with the Holy Spirit; for he was given
the new name, Messiah, or Jesus Christ, - the God-anointed;

MISC 162

even as, at times of special enlightenment,
Jacob was called Israel; and Saul, Paul.
   The third event of this eventful period, - a period of
such wonderful spiritual import to mankind! - was the
advent of a higher Christianity.
   From this dazzling, God-crowned summit, the Nazarene
stepped suddenly before the people and their schools
of philosophy; Gnostic, Epicurean, and Stoic. He must
stem these rising angry elements, and walk serenely over
their fretted, foaming billows.
   Here the cross became the emblem of Jesus' history;
while the central point of his Messianic mission was peace,
good will, love, teaching, and healing.
   Clad with divine might, he was ready to stem the tide
of Judaism, and prove his power, derived from Spirit, to
be supreme; lay himself as a lamb upon the altar of
materialism, and therefrom rise to his nativity in Spirit.
   The corporeal Jesus bore our infirmities, and through
his stripes we are healed. He was the Way-shower, and
suffered in the flesh, showing mortals how to escape from
the sins of the flesh.
   There was no incorporeal Jesus of Nazareth. The
spiritual man, or Christ, was after the similitude of the
Father, without corporeality or finite mind.
   Materiality, worldliness, human pride, or self-will, by
demoralizing his motives and Christlikeness, would have
dethroned his power as the Christ.
   To carry out his holy purpose, he must be oblivious of
human self.
   Of the lineage of David, like him he went forth, simple
as the shepherd boy, to disarm the Goliath. Panoplied
in the strength of an exalted hope, faith, and understanding,

MISC 163

he sought to conquer the three-in-one of error: the
world, the flesh, and the devil.
Three years he went about doing good. He had for
thirty years been preparing to heal and teach divinely;
but his three-years mission was a marvel of glory: its
chaplet, a grave to mortal sense dishonored - from which
sprang a sublime and everlasting victory!
He who dated time, the Christian era, and spanned
eternity, was the meekest man on earth. He healed
and taught by the wayside, in humble homes: to arrant
hypocrite and to dull disciples he explained the Word

Next Page

|| - page index - || - chapter index - || - download - || - Exit - ||