CHRISTMAS GIFTS
Beloved Students: For your manifold Christmas memorials, too numerous to name, I group you in one benison and send you my Christmas gift, two words enwrapped, -love and thanks. To-day Christian Scientists have their record in the monarch’s palace, the Alpine hamlet, the Christian traveler’s resting-place. Wherever the child looks up in prayer, or the Book of Life is loved, there the sinner is reformed and the sick are healed. Those are the “signs following.” What is it that lifts a system of religion to deserved fame? Nothing is worthy the name of religion save one lowly offering – love.
This period, so fraught with opposites, seems illuminated for woman’s hope with divine light. It bids her bind the tenderest tendril of the heart to all of holiest worth. To the woman at the sepulchre, bowed in strong affection’s anguish, one word, “Mary,” broke the gloom with Christ’s all-conquering love. Then came her resurrection and task of glory, to know and to do God’s will, – in the words of St. Paul: “Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.”
The memory of the Bethlehem babe bears to mortals gifts greater than those of Magian kings, – hopes that cannot deceive, that waken prophecy, gleams of glory, coronals of meekness, diadems of love. Nor should they who drink their Master’s cup repine over blossoms that mock their hope and friends that forsake. Divinely beautiful are the Christmas memories of him who sounded all depths of love, grief, death, and humanity.
To the dear children let me say: Your Christmas gifts are hallowed by our Lord’s blessing. A transmitted charm rests on them. May this consciousness of God’s dear love for you give you the might of love, and may you move onward and upward, lowly in its majesty.
To the children who sent me that beautiful statuette in alabaster – a child with finger on her lip reading a book – I write: Fancy yourselves with me; take a peep into my studio; look again at your gift, and you will see the sweetest sculptured face and form conceivable, mounted on its pedestal between my bow windows, and on either side lace and flowers. I have named it my white student.
From First Church of Christ, Scientist, in London, Great Britain, I received the following cabled message: –
REV. MRS. EDDY, PLEASANT VIEW, Concord, N. H.
Loving, grateful Christmas greetings from members London, England, church. December 24, 1901
To this church across the sea I return my heart’s wireless love. All our dear churches’ Christmas telegrams to me are refreshing and most pleasing Christmas presents, for they require less attention than packages and give me more time to think and work for others. I hope that in 1902 the churches will remember me only thus. Do not forget that an honest, wise zeal, a lowly, triumphant trust, a true heart, and a helping hand constitute man, and nothing less is man or woman. (Eddy, Mary Baker, Miscellany, p.257:23-259:20)
WATCHKEEPERS 