While orthodox Christianity admits that the soul of man is immortal and can never die, and that death does not affect the spiritual man, nevertheless the fact that if the real man is immortal and has no ending, he must have had no beginning, has been generally overlooked, although this is taught in Christian Science. We learn, too, in Christian Science that no resurrection awaits the bones and dust that are put away in the grave, but that the resurrection comes hourly and daily, both here and hereafter, and that we are being resurrected when we overcome some sin, or fault of any kind. (See Science and Health, p. 291.) Every time we overcome sin we destroy a tendency to disease, or trouble of some kind, that would appear did we not destroy the sin. Every sense of pleasure in matter which we forestall, that much of pain do we prevent. Every time we rise above a moral fault, or some fear which sits enthroned in our consciousness, we are rising above that much of sorrow or suffering, and consequently rising to some extent above what is called death, as death is nothing more than the culmination of fear, sin, suffering, and disease. Therefore, should death present itself to the one who is working faithfully to overcome evil, there will be much less of fear, less of suffering, if one has destroyed those elements of mortal belief; and if so, then that much less of death itself, for if we destroy the basic elements of a thing, we destroy the thing itself.
In destroying all fear, all sin, all belief of pain or pleasure in matter, and in fact all consciousness of matter itself, so far as he was concerned, Jesus destroyed all the elements of death. Consequently when he overcame these there was to him no death left, and the apostle was right in declaring that Christ "hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light." He demonstrated the perfect spiritual man, and showed that in reality this is the only man. What a grand incentive this offers us, to go daily and hourly out to destroy some enemy that would enter our consciousness and make trouble for us or others; to put on afresh at the beginning of every day the armor with which we may destroy every sin, everything that is not good, when we know that such overcoming is the meeting with God face to face, and is drawing us closer and closer to divine Truth, and farther and farther away from all that makes unhappiness.
Many Christians now believe that there is a progressive state beyond the grave. Christian Scientists understand this to be a necessary truth, and that Jesus proved it by proving the nothingness of death, going through a probationary process for forty days, and finally overcoming all material beliefs remaining in his consciousness. The forty days between his resurrection and ascension were what might be termed the state after death. Jesus went on working and rising above materiality during this time. He made this post-mortem period of practical value to others by showing them how he worked during that state of probation. Some of his demonstrations during that time showed a very high degree of progression,—finally the highest possible.
