That this birth is a historic event for all beings that have deeper cosmic insight into life and existence does not mean nearly as much as the fact that the event in all its details is an expression of or is a picture of a universal event. It is this that is the gospel's mystery. The Christmas Gospel is thus for the one who has the ability to assess the event from a cosmic point of view not merely as a physical or historic occurrence or fact as regards the birth and mental structure of Jesus, but it also constitutes a revelation of or a symbol of every single terrestrial human being's cosmic fate. The fate of Jesus, as it turns out in the gospel, is the fate of all human beings. It is this double nature of this account that makes it a gospel. If the event did not have exactly such a form, the narrative could never have become anything other than, at most, an account of a physical event that once took place. Terrestrial humanity would never have received any Christmas Gospel, but at most only some historical data that could be of archaeological interest, if it ever came to posterity at all.
      That which has made the Christmas Gospel immortal is therefore its identity with a universal principle. It is its being at one with the fate that, without exception, all terrestrial human beings constitute and must go through in order to become perfect human beings. Without this perfection there would never ever be "peace on earth". And the terrestrial human beings would in that way be shut out from experiencing the "good will" that is the Christmas Gospel's greatest promise.
      That which makes the Christmas event a gospel as it has been handed down is not, in the last instance, the actual physical birth of Jesus but on the contrary the fact that the said birth expresses the terrestrial human being's "cosmic birth". Thus one must here understand that every terrestrial human being is in itself, from a cosmic point of view, a "son of God" who at the moment is at the point of "being born". It is correct that this "birth" stretches across a whole terrestrial life, but this does not alter the principle. In the historical account of Jesus's birth it is expressed as a birth taking place in the most primitive conditions, indeed, in a stable where the little newborn child was laid in a manger. In the midst of the stench from the excrements and flatulence of the animals and more or less surrounded by darkness, filth and dust, the world's most perfect mentality was born. But did not this birth become an ingenious symbol or picture of the terrestrial human being's "cosmic birth"?