THE two most prominent presentations upon the stage of human experience are those of life and death, which, while thought of as forever at war and in a sense mutually exclusive, have nevertheless been classed together, even in Christian faiths, as having equally legitimate parts in the divinely ordered human program. Christian Science teaches that the one infinite Life in its omnipresent and ceaseless continuity leaves no place whatever for death, which is therefore neither to be consented to nor feared.
The belief in the reality of death, and that it is essential to life, has been enthroned in most Christian philosophies of the world's redemption. Christ Jesus is said to have become the savior of men by suffering the death penalty attaching to the violation of divine law, apart from which appeasement there could be no remission of sin. Christian Science teaches that he became our savior by consecrating his life to the demonstration of the omnipresence and power of Truth and Love; that the atonement is experienced in the triumph of Life, and that this supreme event must take place in every human consciousness. While recognizing the significance of the cross as a sublime evidence of the greatness of the Saviour's sacrifice in order that Love's verity and efficiency might be revealed to human understanding, Christian Science bases all its assurance of redemption on the presence and availability to every man of that infinite Life and Love which was made manifest in the ministry of the Nazarene.
Christian Science declares that death is but the consummation of false belief; that the divine idea is not its victim but its destroyer; that the Master did not pass through this experience because he had to, but because he could thereby prove to mankind the powerlessness of evil, the greatness of Love's compassion. Christian Science does not look to death for the perfection or transformation of character, and in this it is farthest removed, perhaps, from the prevalent theological teaching that death is to separate human consciousness from its falsities, and purge it of its sensual desires, a teaching which has led men to look upon death not as an enemy but as a friend, as the means of escape from imperfections and limitations. Through it we are to enter the ideal at a bound, hence the good are wont to look upon it with complacency, and approach the tomb
