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two mighty pillars of the spirit have the two annual
festivals, the festivals of Christmas and Easter, been set by
the Christian cosmic feeling within the course of the year,
which should be a symbol of the course of man's life. We may
say that in the conception of Christmas and the conception of
Easter there stand before the human soul those two
spiritual pillars upon which are inscribed the two great
mysteries of man's physical existence which he must look upon
very differently from the way in which he views other events in
the course of his physical life. It is true that a
super-sensible element is projected into this physical
life — through sense observation, through intellectual
judgments, through the content of feeling and will. But this
super-sensible element is in other cases clearly manifest as
such — for instance, when the Christian cosmic
feeling undertakes to symbolize it in the festival of
Pentecost. In the Christmas conception, however, and that of
Easter, attention is drawn to those two events occurring within
the course of the physical life which are in their external
appearance purely physical but which — in contrast
with all other physical events — do not immediately
manifest themselves as physical events. We can look upon the
physical life of man as we look upon nature; we can thus look
upon the external side of the physical life, the external
manifestation of the spiritual. But we can never view with our
physical vision the two boundary experiences of the course of
human life — not even the external aspect, the
external manifestation — without being brought face
to face, even through our physical vision, with the tremendous
riddle, the element of mystery, in these two events. They are
the events of birth and death. And in the life of
Christ Jesus stand these two events of man's physical life
— and likewise in the Christmas and Easter
conceptions, reminding us of them — confronting the
responsive Christian heart.
In
the thought of Christmas and the thought of Easter, the soul of
man wills to look upon the two great mysteries. And, as it thus
looks, it finds in this contemplation strength filled with
light for man's thought, content filled with power for the
will, an upright lift of the whole man, from whatever situation
he needs this upright lift. As they thus confront us, these two
pillars of the spirit — the thought of Christmas and the
thought of Easter — they possess an eternal worth.
But, in the course of man's evolution, his capacities of
conception have approached in manifold ways the great
Christmas thought and the great Easter thought. During the
earliest times of the evolution of Christianity, when the Event
of Golgotha had penetrated with shattering effect into
human emotions, men gradually found their way to the view
of the Redeemer dying on Golgotha, as they came during
the earliest Christian centuries to feel in the Crucified One
hanging on the cross the thought of Redemption, and gradually
formed for themselves the great and powerful imagination of the
Christ dying on the cross. But in the later times, especially
since the modern age began, Christian feeling — adapting
itself to the materialism rising in human evolution — has
turned to the picture of the childlike element entering
the world in the newborn Jesus.
We
can certainly say that a sensitive feeling will find in the way
in which the Christian sentiment of Europe has turned during
recent centuries to the Christmas manger something of a
materialistic Christianity. The craving — this is not
said in a bad sense — to caress the infant Jesus has
become trivial in the course of the centuries. And many a song
about the infant Jesus felt in our day to be beautiful —
or charming, as many express it — will not seem to
us to possess a deep enough seriousness in the presence
of these more serious times.
But
the Easter thought and the Christmas thought, my dear friends,
are two eternal pillars, eternal memorial pillars, of the human
heart. And we can truly say that our age of new spiritual
revelations will cast a new light upon the Christmas thought;
that the Christmas thought will gradually come to be felt in a
new form and in a glorious way. It will be our task to hear in
the present world events the call to a renovation of many an
old conception, a call to a new revelation of the spirit. It
will be our task to understand how a new conception of
Christmas, for the strengthening and uplifting of the human
soul, is working its way up through the present course of world
events.
The
birth and death of the human being, no matter how we may
analyze them, how intensely we may look at them, manifest
themselves as events which play their role directly upon the
physical plane, and in which the spiritual is so dominant that
no one who earnestly reflects upon things could deny that these
two events, these earthly events of human life, give evidence
as they work upon the human being that man is the citizen of a
spiritual world. No vision of the natural world can ever
succeed — in the midst of what can be perceived by
the senses, understood by the intellect — in
finding in birth and death anything other than events in
which the intervention of the spirit is manifested directly in
the physical. Only these two events manifest themselves thus to
the human heart.
As
to the Christmas event also, the event of birth, the human and
Christian heart must have an ever deepening sense of
mystery. We can say that men have seldom risen to the
level whence they could, in the true sense, direct their look
to the mysterious nature of birth. Very seldom, indeed, but
then in concepts that speak to the utmost depths of the human
heart.
So
it is, my dear friends, in the conception associated with the
spiritual life of Switzerland of the fifteenth century, with
Nicholas von der Flue. It is related of
him — and he himself related this — that, before
his birth, before he could breathe the outer air, he had beheld
his own human form, that which he would wear after his birth
should have occurred and his life should have begun its course.
And he had beheld before his birth the ceremony of his own
christening, the persons who were present at the christening
and who shared in his earliest experiences. With the exception
of one elderly person who was then present and whom he did not
know, he recognized the others because he had already seen them
before he beheld the light of the world.
However we may view this narration, we shall not be able to
escape the impression that it points in a way to the mystery of
human birth, which confronts world history so
magnificently symbolized in the Christmas conception. In
the story of Nicholas von der Flue we shall find the suggestion
that there is connected with our entrance into the physical
life something which is concealed from the every-day view of
humanity only by a very thin partition wall; by a wall which
can be broken through when such a karmic situation exists as
was present in the case of Nicholas von der Flue. Such a
startling allusion to the mystery of birth and of Christmas
still meets us here and there; but we must say that humanity
has as yet become very little aware of the fact that birth and
death, the two boundary pillars of human life facing us in the
midst of the physical world, reveal themselves even in their
physical manifestation as spiritual events, such as could never
occur within the mere course of nature; as events in which, on
the contrary, spiritual divine Powers intervene, as is evident
in the very fact that both these boundary experiences of the
course of human life must still remain mysteries, even in their
physical manifestation.
The
new revelation of the Christ now leads us to contemplate
the course of man's life — so we may safely say —
as Christ wills that we should contemplate it in the twentieth
century. Let us recall today, as we desire to enter deeply into
the thought of Christmas, a saying reported to have been
uttered by Christ Jesus which can rightly lead us to the
Christmas conception. The saying runs thus: “Except ye
become as little children, ye shall not enter into the Kingdom
of Heaven.” “Except ye become as little
children” — this is truly not an exhortation to
strip away all the mystery character of the Christmas
conception, and to drag it down to the triviality of
“dear little Jesus,” as many folk songs and
artistic songs have done — but the folk songs less than
the artistic — in the course of the materialistic
evolution of Christianity. This very saying —
“Except ye become as little children, ye shall not enter
into the Kingdom of Heaven” — impels us to look
upward to mighty impulses surging through the stream of human
evolution. And in our own present time, when all that is taking
place in the world surely does not give occasion for lapsing
into trivial conceptions of Christmas, when the human heart is
filled with so much that is painful, when this human heart must
reflect upon so many millions of human beings who have met
their death in the last few years, must reflect upon countless
multitudes who hunger for food, — in this time surely
nothing is fitting for us save to behold the mighty thoughts
within world history which impel humanity in its onward course,
thoughts to which we can be guided by the saying, “Except
ye shall become as little children,” which we can
supplement by this other saying: “Unless you live your
life in the light of this thought, you cannot enter into the
Kingdom of Heaven.”
My
dear friends, the very moment when the human being enters into
the world as a child he withdraws from the world of spirit. For
what occurs in the physical world, the procreation and growth
of his physical body, is only the ensheathing of that event
which cannot be described otherwise than by saying that man in
his deepest being withdraws from the spiritual world. Man is
born out of the spirit into a body. When the Rosicrucian said:
“Ex deo nascimur,” he meant the human
being to the extent that he enters the physical world.
For that which constitutes the sheaths around the human
being, which renders him a physical totality here on the
earthly globe, is what is indicated by the saying: Ex deo
nascimur. If we look at the centre of the human
being, at the inner midmost entity, we must say that man
journeys out of the spirit into the physical world. Through
that which occurs in the physical world, that upon which he has
looked down from the land of the spirit before his
conception or his birth, he is enveloped in his physical
body, in order that he may experience in his physical body
things which cannot be experienced except in such a body.
But, in his centre-most being, man comes out of the spiritual
world. And he is of such a nature that in his earliest years
— to the eyes of those who will to see things as they are
in the world, who are not blinded by the illusion of
materialism — he is of such a nature, this human being,
that he reveals even in his earliest years how he has come out
of the spirit. What we experience in connection with the
child is of such a character, for those who possess insight, as
to reveal to one's feeling the after effects of
experiences in the spiritual world.
It
is to this mystery that such narrations as that associated with
the name of Nicholas von der Flue are intended to allude. A
trivial view, strongly influenced by a materialistic mode of
thinking, declares in its simplicity that the human being
gradually develops his ego in the course of his life from
birth to death; that this ego becomes more and more powerful
and mighty, more and more distinctly manifest. This is a naive
way of thinking, my dear friends. For, if we look upon the true
ego of man, upon that which comes into a physical
sheathing at the birth of the human being out of the
spiritual world, we then express ourselves very differently
about man's whole physical evolution. That is, we then know
that, as the human being progressively develops in the physical
body, the true ego actually vanishes out of the physical form,
that it becomes less and less manifest; and that what develops
here in the physical world between birth and death is only a
mirrored reflection of spiritual occurrences, a dead reflection
of a higher life. The right form of expression would be to
declare that the entire fullness of the being of man gradually
disappears into the body, becoming continually less and less
manifest. As the human being lives his physical life here upon
the earth, he gradually loses himself in his body, to find
himself again in the spirit after death. So does one who knows
the facts express himself. But one who is ignorant of the facts
declares that the child is incomplete, and that the ego little
by little develops to an ever greater perfection, growing out
of the undefined subconscious levels of man's existence.
He who knows what is beheld by the spiritual seeker must
express himself in just this realm otherwise than is done by
the sense-consciousness of our age, enmeshed in external
illusions, still always materialistic in the trend of its
sentiments.
Thus man enters the world as a spiritual being. His bodily
nature, while he is a child, is still undefined; it has as yet
laid small claim to the spiritual nature, which enters the
physical existence as if there falling asleep — but
appearing to us so little filled with content only because we
can perceive this spiritual being, in ordinary physical life,
just as little as we can perceive the sleeping ego and astral
body when they are separated from the physical and etheric
bodies. But the fact that we do not perceive a being does not
make it less perfect. This is what the human being has to
acquire by means of his physical body — that he entombs
himself more and more in the physical body for the purpose of
achieving by means of this burial in the body capacities which
can be acquired only in this way, only through the fact that
the spirit and soul being for a time loses itself in the
physical existence. In order that we may always remember
our spiritual origin, that we may grow strong in the thought
that we have journeyed out of the spirit into the physical
world — it is for this reason that the Christmas
conception stands there like a mighty pillar of light amid the
Christian cosmic feeling. This thought, as a Christmas thought,
must grow ever stronger in the future spiritual evolution of
humanity. Then will the Christmas conception become powerful
again for humanity; then will mankind once more approach the
Christmas festival in such a way as to draw forces for
the physical life out of the Christmas conception, which can
remind us in the right way of our spiritual origin. Seldom can
this Christmas thought be so powerful at the present time
as it will then be in human hearts. For it is a strange fact,
but rooted in the very laws of spiritual existence, that what
comes to light in the world — bearing mankind forward,
helpful to mankind — does not at once appear in its
ultimate form: that it first appears, as it were, tumultuously,
as if prematurely brought forth by unlawful spirits in
world evolution. We understand the historic evolution of
humanity in its true meaning only when we know that truths are
not to be understood only as they first appear oftentimes in
world history, but that we must consider in relation to
truths the right moment for their entrance into human
evolution in their true light.
Among many kinds of thoughts which have entered into the
evolution of modern humanity — certainly inspired by the
Christ impulse, but at first in a premature form — is the
conception of the equality of mankind before God and
the world, the equality of all men, a thought profoundly
Christian but capable of an ever increasing profundity. But we
should not place this thought before men's hearts in such a
generalization as that given to it by the French Revolution,
when it first appeared tumultuously in human evolution. We must
be aware of the fact that this life of man from birth to death
is involved in a process of evolution, and that the primary
impulses working upon it are distributed in time. Let us
reflect about the human being as he enters into the sensible
existence: he enters life filled with the impulse of the
equality of the human nature in all men. We sense the child
nature with the greatest intensity when we see a child
permeated through his whole being by the conception of the
equality of all men. Nothing which creates inequality among
men, nothing that so organizes men that they feel themselves
different from other men — nothing of all this enters at
first into the child's nature. All this is imparted to the
human being in the course of the physical life. Inequality is
created by the physical existence; out of the spirit human
beings come forth equal before the world and God
and before other human beings. Thus does the mystery of the
child declare.
And
to this mystery of the child the Christmas conception is
united, which is to find its deeper meaning in the new
Christian revelation. For this new Christian revelation will
take into account the new Trinity: the human being, as
he directly represents humanity; the Ahrimanic;
and the Luciferic. And, as it comes to be known how the
human being is placed in the world in a relationship of balance
between the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic, it will be understood
also what this human being really is in the external physical
existence.
Most of all must understanding come about, Christian
understanding, in reference to a certain aspect of human
life. Clearly will Christian thought proclaim in future what
has already been affirmed by certain spirits since the
middle of the nineteenth century, though in stammering accents
and never quite distinctly. When we grasp the fact that the
thought of equality enters the world in the child, but that
forces of inequality later develop in man, as if from the
fact of his having been born, forces that do not seem to belong
to this earth, then just in regard to the conception of
equality another profound mystery faces us. To see into this
mystery, and through seeing into it to gain a true
conception of man, will belong from the present time onward
among the weighty and essential needs in the future evolution
of the life of the soul. This is the depressing problem
that faces man: Truly, human beings grow to be unlike,
even though they are not so in childhood, by reason of
something that is born within them, that is in the blood: their
varied gifts and capacities.
The
question of gifts and capacities, which cause so many
inequalities among men, faces us in connection with the thought
of Christmas. And the Christmas festival of the future will
always admonish men most earnestly, reminding them of the
origin of that which differentiates them so widely over the
earth, the origin of their gifts, capacities, talents, even the
gift of genius. They will have to inquire about the origin of
these. And a true balance within the physical existence will be
attained only when the human being can point rightly to
the origin of the capacities which differentiate him from
other men. The light of Christmas, or the Christmas candles,
must give to evolving humanity an explanation of these
capacities; it must answer the profound question: Do individual
human beings suffer injustice between birth and death under the
ordering of the universe? What is the truth about faculties and
gifts?
Now, my dear friends, many things will be seen in a
different light when humanity shall have been permeated
by the new Christian feeling. Most particularly will it be
understood why the Old Testament occult conception possessed a
special insight into the nature of the prophetic gift. What
were the prophets who appear in the Old Testament? They were
personalities who had been sanctified by Jahve; they were those
personalities who were permitted to employ in the right way
special spiritual gifts reaching far above those of ordinary
man. Jahve had first to sanctify their capacities, which are
born in men as if by reason of their blood. And we know that
Jahve works on human beings between their falling asleep
and awakening We know that Jahve does not work within the
conscious life. Every true believer of the Old Testament said
within his heart: That which differentiates men as regards
their capacities and gifts, which rises to the level of genius
in the nature of the prophet, is born, indeed, with the person,
but it is not used by him for a good purpose unless he can sink
down in sleep into that realm in which Jahve guides his soul
impulses, and transforms from the spiritual world gifts
which are otherwise only physical, inherent in the body.
We
point here to a profound mystery of the Old Testament
conception. The Old Testament view, including that in
regard to the nature of the prophet, must disappear. New
conceptions must, for the redemption of humanity, enter
into the cosmic historic evolution. That which the ancient
Hebrew believed was sanctified by Jahve in the unconscious
state of sleep the human being must become capable of
sanctifying in the modern age while he is awake, in a
state of clear consciousness. But he can do this
only if he knows, on the one hand, that all natural gifts,
capacities, talents, even genius, are Luciferic endowments, and
work in the world Luciferically. unless they are
sanctified and permeated by all that can enter into the world
as the impulse of the Christ. We touch upon a
tremendously important mystery of the evolution of modern
humanity when we grasp the central kernel of the
Christmas conception, and call attention to the fact that
the Christ must be so understood and so felt by men in their
hearts that they stand as New Testament human beings before the
Christ and say: “In addition to the inclination of the
child, his aspiration, toward equality, I have been
endowed with various capacities and talents. But they can lead
permanently to good results, to the welfare of humanity, only
provided these gifts, these talents, are dedicated to the
service of Christ Jesus; only if the human being strives to
permeate his whole nature with the Christ, in order that human
gifts, talents, genius may be freed from the grasp of
Lucifer.”
The
heart permeated by the Christ takes away from Lucifer what
works otherwise Luciferically in man's physical existence. This
thought must powerfully influence the future evolution of the
human soul. This is the New Christmas thought, the new
annunciation of the influence of the Christ in our souls,
bringing about the transformation of the Luciferic —
which does not enter into us because we journey out of the
spirit, but is to be found in us because we are clothed in a
blood-permeated physical body which bestows upon us capacities
derived from the line of heredity. Within the Luciferic stream,
within that which works in the stream of heredity, do these
characteristics appear, but they are to be conquered and
mastered during the physical life by that which the human being
can feel in connection with the Christ impulse, not
through Jahve inspiration in sleep, but through the fruition of
man's experiences in full consciousness.
“Direct yourself, O Christian, to the Christmas
thought” — thus does the new Christianity speak
— “and lay there upon the altar set up for
Christmas every differentiation you have received as a
human being from your blood, and sanctify your capacities,
sanctify your gifts, sanctify even your genius as you behold it
illuminated by the light which comes from the Christmas
tree.”
The
new annunciation of the spirit must speak a new language,
and we must not be dumb and unheeding toward the new revelation
of the spirit which speaks to us in this deeply serious age in
which we live. When we are sensitive to such thoughts, we are
living with the power with which man ought to live in this time
in order to discharge the great duties which are to be assigned
to humanity in this very age. The full gravity of the
Christmas thought must be experienced: that in our day there
must enter into the waking consciousness of humanity what
the Christ willed to say to men when he uttered the words:
“Except ye become as little children ye shall not enter
into the Kingdom of Heaven.” The thought of equality
which the child manifests, if we look upon him in the right
way, is not convicted of falsehood by reason of these words,
for that Child whose birth we commemorate on Christmas
eve, proclaims to human beings in the course of their
evolution through the history of the world — revealing
ever new thoughts — clearly and distinctly, that the
differentiating gifts we possess must be placed within the
light of the Christ who ensouled this Child; that all
which these differentiating gifts bring about within us human
beings must be placed upon the altar of this Child.
You
may now ask under the inspiration of the Christmas thought:
“How may I experience the Christ impulse within my own
soul?” Alas, this thought is often a heavy burden in
men's hearts.
Now, my dear friends, that which we may call the Christ impulse
does not become rooted in our souls in a moment,
forthwith and tempestuously. And in different ages it
takes root differently in man. In our day man must take into
himself in full clear waking consciousness such cosmic thoughts
as have been stammeringly imparted by spiritual knowledge as
guided by Anthroposophy, to which we belong. As these thoughts
are proclaimed to him — provided he truly understands
them — they can awaken within him the assurance that the
new revelation, the new Christ impulse of our
age, truly enters into him on the wings of these thoughts. And
such a person will sense the new impulse if only he pays heed
to it.
Make the endeavour, in the sense we intend, in living reality
as is appropriate to our age, to take into yourselves the
spiritual thoughts of the guidance of the world; seek to take
them into yourselves, not as mere teaching, not merely as
theory — -seek so to imbibe them that they will move your
souls to their very depths, warming, illuminating, permeating
them — that you shall bear them livingly within you. Seek
to feel these thoughts so intensely that they shall become to
you something which seems to pass through your body into your
soul and to change your very body. Seek to strip away from
these thoughts all abstractions, anything theoretical.
Endeavour to discover for yourself that these thoughts are such
as constitute a true nourishment of the soul. Seek to
discover for yourself that, with these thoughts, not merely
thoughts alone enter your souls, but spiritual life coming from
the spiritual world.
Enter into the most intimate inner union with these thoughts,
and you will observe three things. You will observe that these
thoughts gradually eliminate something from within you, which
appears so clearly in human hearts in our age of the
consciousness soul: that these thoughts, however they may
be expressed, eliminate self-seeking from the human soul. When
you begin to notice that these thoughts kill egoism, destroy
the force of self-seeking, you have then, my dear friends,
sensed the Christ-permeated character of
spiritual thought guided by Anthroposophy.
In
the second place, when you observe that, in the moment when
untruthfulness approaches you anywhere in the world, no matter
whether you yourself are tempted to be too careless about truth
or whether untruthfulness approaches you from another
direction — if you observe that in the moment when
untruthfulness enters the sphere of your life, an
impulse makes itself felt by you, warning you, pointing
to the truth, an impulse which will not permit untruth to
enter your life, always admonishing you and impelling you to
hold fast to truth, then do you sense, in contrast with the
life of the present day, so strongly inclined toward mere
appearance, the living impulse of the Christ. No one
will find it easy to lie in the presence of spiritual thoughts
guided by Anthroposophy, or to lack all feeling for mere
appearance and untruth. A sign pointing your way to the sense
of truth — apart from all other knowledge — you
will feel in the thoughts of the new revelation of the Christ.
When, my dear friends, you shall have reached the point where
you do not strive for a mere theoretical understanding of
spiritual science, as this is sought in relation to any other
science, but when you have reached the stage where the thoughts
so penetrate you that you say to yourself: “When these
thoughts become intimately united with my soul, it is as if a
Power of conscience stood beside me admonishing me, pointing me
toward truth,” — then will you have found the
Christ impulse in the second form.
In
the third place, when you feel that something streams from
these thoughts which works even into your body, but
especially into the soul, overcoming sickness, making the
human being well and vital, when you sense the rejuvenating,
refreshing power of these thoughts, the adversary of
illness, then will you have sensed the third part of the Christ
impulse in these thoughts. For this is the goal toward which
humanity strives through the new wisdom, in the new spirit
— to find in the spirit itself the power to overcome
self-seeking: to overcome self-seeking through love, the mere
appearance of life through truth, the force of illness through
health-giving thoughts which bring us into immediate unison
with the harmonies of the universe, because they flow
from the harmonies of the universe.
Not
all that has been indicated can at present be attained, for man
bears within him an ancient heritage. It is a mere lack of
understanding when such a back-stairs politician as Christian
Science twists into a caricature the thought of the healing
power of the spirit. Yet, even though our ancient heritage
renders it impossible for thought to become sufficiently
potent at present to achieve what the human being craves thus
to achieve — perhaps, from a self-seeking motive —
nevertheless thought possesses healing power. In such things
human thinking is always perverted. Some one who
understands these things may say to you that certain thoughts
give health, and the person who hears this may at a certain
time be affected by this or that illness. Indeed, my dear
friends, the fact that we cannot at present be relieved of all
illnesses by the mere power of thought is due to an ancient
heritage. But are you able to say what illnesses would have
overtaken you if you had not possessed the thoughts? Could you
say that your life would have been passed in its present degree
of health if you had not possessed these thoughts? In the case
of a person who has applied himself to spiritual science guided
by Anthroposophy and who dies at the age of 45 years, can you
prove that, without these thoughts, he would not have died at
42 or 40 years of age? Human beings tend always to think from
the wrong direction when they deal with these thoughts. They
direct their attention to what cannot be bestowed upon
them, by reason of their karma, but do not pay attention to
what is bestowed upon them by reason of their karma. But if, in
spite of everything contradictory in the external physical
world, you direct your look with the power of inner confidence
which you have gained through intimate familiarity with the
thoughts of spiritual science, you then come to feel the
healing power, a healing power which penetrates even into
the physical body, refreshing, rejuvenating — the third
element, which the Christ as the Healer brings with his never
ceasing revelations into the human soul.
We
have desired to enter more deeply, my dear friends, into the
thought of Christmas, which is so closely bound up with the
mystery of human birth. What is revealed to us today out of the
spirit as the continuing extension of the Christmas thought we
desired to bring in brief outline before our minds. We can feel
that it gives strength and support to our lives. We can feel
that it places us amid the impulses of cosmic evolution,
no matter what may befall, so that we can feel ourselves in
unison with these divine impulses in the evolution of the
world; that we can understand them, and can draw power for our
will from this understanding, and light for our life of
thought. Man is evolving; it would be wrong to deny this
evolution. The only right course is to go forward with
this evolution.
Moreover, Christ has declared: “I am with you always even
to the end of the world.” This is not a phrase; it is
truth. Christ has revealed Himself not only in the Gospels;
Christ is with us; Christ reveals Himself continually. We must
have ears to harken to what He is ever newly revealing in the
modern age. Weakness will overcome us if we have no faith in
these new revelations; but strength shall be ours if we have
such faith.
Strength will come to us if we have faith in the new
revelations, even should they speak to us from life's
seemingly contradictory suffering and misfortune. With
our own souls we pass through repeated earth lives during which
our destiny comes to fulfilment. Even this thought, which
empowers us to sense the spiritual behind the external physical
life, we can realize only when we take into ourselves in the
truly Christian sense the revelations following one upon
another. The Christian — the true Christian —
when he stands before the candles on the Christmas tree, should
begin to work with the strengthening thoughts which can
come to him today from the new cosmic revelation, to give power
to his will, illumination to his life of thought. And his
feeling should be such that the power and the light of this
thought may enable him in the course of the Christian year to
draw close to that other thought which admonishes of the
mystery of death — the Easter thought, which brings the
final experience of the earthly life of man before our souls as
a spiritual experience. For we shall sense the Christ more and
more if we are able to place our own existence in the right
relation with His existence. The medieval Rosicrucian, uniting
his thought with Christianity, declared: Ex deo nascimur;
in Christo morimur; per spiritum sanctum
reviviscinius. Out of the Divine have we been born
as we contemplate ourselves as human beings here on the
earthly globe. In Christ we die. In the Holy Spirit we shall be
again awakened. This actually pertains to our
life, our human life. If we turn our look away from our life to
the life of Christ, then what is represented in our life is a
mirrored reflection. Out of the Divine are we born; in Christ
we die; in the Holy Spirit we shall again be awakened. This
saying, which is true of our first-born Brother, the Christ
living in our midst, we can so affirm that we shall feel it to
be the Christ-truth raying forth from Him and mirrored in our
human nature: Out of the Spirit was He begotten — as this
is represented in the Gospel of Luke in the symbol of the
descending dove — out of the Spirit was He begotten; in
the human body He died; in the Divine will He rise again.
Truths which are eternal we can take into ourselves in the
right way only when we see them in their contemporary
reflection — not made into something absolute, made
abstract in a single form. And if we feel ourselves as
human beings, not only in an abstract sense but human beings
existing actually at a certain time when it is our duty to act
and to think in harmony with this time, then shall we
seek to understand the Christ, who is with us always even to
the end of the world, in His contemporary language as He
teaches us and gives us light regarding the Christmas thought,
filling us with the power of the Christmas thought. We shall
desire to take this Christ into ourselves in His new language.
For the Christ must become intimately related to us. Then
shall we be enabled to fulfil in ourselves the true mission of
Christ on the earthly globe and beyond death. The human being
in each epoch must take the Christ into himself in his
own way. This has been the feeling of human beings
when they have looked in the right way at the two great pillars
of the spirit: at the Christmas thought and the Easter thought.
Thus did the profound German mystic, the Silesian, Angelus
Silesius, contemplating the Christmas thought, declare:
Should Christ a thousand times in Bethlehem be born,
And not in thee, then wert thou still forlorn.
And, contemplating the Easter thought, he said:
The cross of Golgotha must be upraised in thee
Ere from thy sin its power shall make thee free.
Truly the Christ must live within us, since we are not human
beings in an absolute sense, but human beings of a definite
epoch. The Christ must be born within us according to the sound
of His words in our epoch. We must seek to bring the Christ to
birth within us, for our strengthening, for our
illumination, as He has remained with us until now, as He
will remain with mankind throughout all ages even to the
end of earthly time, as He wills now to be born in our souls.
That is, if we seek to experience the birth of Christ within us
in our epoch, as this event becomes a light and a power in our
souls — the eternal power and eternal life entering into
time — we then behold in the true way the historic birth
of Christ in Bethlehem and its counterpart in our own
souls.
Should Christ a thousand times in Bethlehem be born,
And not in thee, then wert thou still forlorn.
As
He creates the impulse in our hearts today to look upon His
birth — His birth in human events, His birth in our own
souls — so do we deepen the Christmas thought within us.
And then we look away to that night of consecration which we
ought to feel coming to pass within us for the strengthening
and illumination of human beings for the endurance of many
evils and sorrows which they have had to live through and will
yet have to live through.
“My Kingdom,” said Christ, “is not of this
world.” It is a saying which challenges us, if we look
upon His birth in the right way, to find within ourselves the
path to the Kingdom where He abides to give us strength, where
He abides to give us light amid our darkness and helplessness
through the impulses coming from the world of which He
himself spoke, of which His appearance on Christmas will always
be a manifestation. “My Kingdom is not of this
world.” But He has brought that Kingdom into this world,
so that we may always find strength, comfort, confidence, and
hope out of this Kingdom in all the circumstances of
life, if we only will come to Him, taking His words to heart
— such words as these:
“Except ye become as little children, ye shall
not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.”
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