For the readers of Mrs. Eddy's remarkable and epoch-making volume, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," there could be nothing more challenging to their preconceived theories and beliefs than the statement on page 468 that "time is no part of eternity." No assertion could be more subversive of the generally accepted interpretations of life, and more illuminating to the thought which has begun to grapple with the great metaphysical truths that lie back of Jesus' works and words.
When some part of the meaning of this sentence became clear to the writer's consciousness, she found herself lifted to the region where spiritual freedom gives rapture to thought and some glimmer of the divine glory is reached. Before this realization of God's allness she had been oppressed by a great sorrow, the greatest, it seemed to her. that could come to a mortal: but with this new insight gained, the weight was lifted from her. She saw dimly the great spiritual order which had unfolded to Jesus' thought, the creation in which no man on the earth was called "father," but all were children of one perfect source and knew but their "Father, which is in heaven." In that realm of Mind and its ideas she could see no relationships' but those which are spiritual, and with this came the realization that there could be no joy, no satisfaction, other than that which was spiritually conceived and expressed. With this train of thought there came a great change to her. The vision of a life which was partial and imperfect in its bestowals of happiness faded from consciousness, and she saw quite clearly the nothingness of the sense which forever limits all that is good and beautiful.
In the new sense of oneness and wholeness which followed, the writer could understand what Jesus meant when he said that the teachers who came before him were really "thieves and robbers," and how it was he could add the words, "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." No wonder there was a division among the Jews after these savings and that many thought he was mad. Here was no new truth to be easily grafted on to the dogmas which they were living.
