Spencer Heath Archive

Item 2208

Typed page of a text evidently prepared for a Christmas message. Note that the two originals differ slightly.

Winter 1957-1958

 

Let us celebrate the Nativity in our hearts by ever new birthdays of the Spirit and by ever wider understandings in our minds.

The Babe of Bethlehem came into an era of one-world peace, under a Pax Romana whose Imperial Eagles guarded well all lesser powers against wars among themselves. One Power was supreme—to tax and to destroy. There was world peace, indeed, but with peace no freedom from the one-world Power. And to safeguard its own peace, its own law and order, though with some reluctance, it destroyed even Him.

But His Spirit lives again in the lives of all men who engage in mutual service according to the unforced, the free and equal meetings of their minds. Even in the riotous overreachings of central powers today, His Spirit is moving men, all unknowingly, to turn away from evil by engaging in contractual and free instead of political and coercive relationships—each doing unto others in the same manner that he would have others do unto him. This for the profit and reward of ever more abundant life for all.

Only in relationships of freedom can men create. Only by extension of their free enterprises, both corporate and unincorporated, into new and wider fields—to serve and be served, live and let live—can men practice mutual freedom and thereby gain the spiritual power not to destroy but enduringly to create and come into ever more abundant life.

The teaching of the Christ was a wholly new dispensation to the spirit of man. It was the first and only true charter of freedom, not alone from self-limitations within but no less truly from thralldom to the sovereign powers of the world.

 

 

 

 

 

The Babe of Bethlehem was born in the midst of an era of one-world peace under a Pax Romana whose imperial eagles guarded and protected all the lesser sovereignties and powers against wars among themselves. One power was supreme—to tax and to destroy. There was world peace, indeed, but with world peace no freedom from the one-world power. And to safeguard its own peace, its own law and order, with some reluctance it destroyed Him.

But His Spirit survived and lives again in the lives of all men who engage in mutual service according to the unforced, the free and equal meetings of their minds. Even in today’s riotous over—reachings of central sovereign powers, His Spirit is moving men, all unknowingly, into ever more obedience to His divine command that they turn away from evil by engaging in contractual and free instead of political and coercive relationships—each doing unto others in the same manner that he would have them do unto him, for the profit and reward of ever more abundant life for all.

Political authority has none but coercive power, the power to enslave and to destroy. Only in relationships of freedom can men create.  Only by the extension of their free enterprises, both corporate and unincorporated, into new and wider fields—to serve and be served, live and let live—can men practice mutual freedom and there­by gain the spiritual power not to destroy but enduringly to create and come into ever more abundant life.

The teaching of the Christ was a wholly new dispensation to the spirit of man. It was the first and only true charter of freedom, not alone from self-limitations within but no less truly from our deepening thralldom to the sovereign powers of the world. Let us celebrate His nativity in our hearts by ever new birthdays of the spirit and by ever wider understandings in our minds.