We do not question the authenticity of the Scriptural narrative of the
Virgin-mother and Bethlehem babe, and the Messianic mission of Christ
Jesus; but in our time no Christian Scientist will give chimerical wings to
his imagination, or advance speculative theories as to the recurrence of
such events.

No person can take the individual place of the Virgin Mary. No person can
compass or fulfil the individual mission of Jesus of Nazareth. No person
can take the place of the author of Science and Health, the Discoverer and
Founder of Christian Science. Each individual must fill his own niche in
time and eternity.

The second appearing of Jesus is, unquestionably, the spiritual advent of
the advancing idea of God, as in Christian Science.

And the scientific ultimate of this God-idea must be, will be, forever
individual, incorporeal, and infinite, even the reflection, "image and
likeness," of the infinite God.

The right teacher of Christian Science lives the truth he teaches.
Preeminent among men, he virtually stands at the head of all sanitary,
civil, moral, and religious reform. Such a post of duty, unpierced by
vanity, exalts a mortal beyond human praise, or monuments which weigh
dust, and humbles him with the tax it raises on calamity to open the gates
of heaven. It is not the forager on others' wisdom that God thus crowns,
but he who is obedient to the divine command, "Render to Cæsar the things
that are Cæsar's, and to God the things that are God's."

Great temptations beset an ignorant or an unprincipled mind-practice in