THE Christian paradox, "He that loseth his life for my sake shall find it," has a new and practical meaning for the student of divine metaphysics. He has emerged from the terrifying belief that it is possible to lose something that God has given him. He no longer admits that he can ever be deprived of something, but insists that he can ultimately prove the nothingness of all that is unlike good. He knows that all that can ever be lost or forgotten is a false or mistaken sense of life, and that Christ Jesus came to show him how to put off or lose this false sense. Jesus told those who would follow him that they had a work to perform within themselves before they could partake of his divine life; that there was a cross to be shouldered before they could enjoy his peace and rest.
If all are to know God,—"from the least of them unto the greatest,"—there comes a time when every human being must face the greatest of all problems, the problem of learning how to live. There comes a time when he must cease "from man, whose breath is in his nostrils," and begin to contemplate Life from a wholly spiritual standpoint. He must cease believing that "the breath of life" spoken of in the second chapter of Genesis is the real or God-given life of man, and begin to know something of the Life which is God, infinite and eternal. The orthodox belief that physical death must ensue before eternal Life can be recognized, has been one of the greatest obstacles in the way of health, peace, and happiness on earth. Christian Science is effectually removing this obstacle in the Christian's pathway, and is showing him how to "lay hold on eternal life;" how to enter into life here and now.
Neither the so-called birth nor death of man registers his entrance into life. The real man always has lived and always will live in God. This great spiritual fact becomes humanity's savior from the suppositional dream-life of mortals. It is their constant thought-model, to which they must flee for refuge whenever tempted to believe the suggestion of the serpent that life is finite or separate and apart from God. The so-called physical senses, if obeyed, lead away from life and not into it. They point to human birth, maturity, and dissolution as the sum and substance of life. They know nothing of Life as age-abiding. They receive not the things of the Spirit of Life: for they are foolishness unto them; neither can they know them, "because they are spiritually discerned." Mrs. Eddy has opened the gateway to the spiritual kingdom in making plain to this age that these so-called senses cannot grasp the meaning of Life, and that they must be subjected, here or hereafter, before one can enter into life. Solomon must have caught a glimmer of truth when he said: "The way of life is above to the wise, that he may depart from hell beneath." Christian Science emphasizes this same thought, that the true way of life is above and beyond the reach of physical sense, and that a mistaken sense of life embraces all the discords of earth.
