The passing of time is powerless to rob man of his birthright of life and intelligence, derived from divine Principle, Love, and forever renewed and replenished. Life and intelligence are never obtained through matter, and are never lost in Mind. One who believed his life and intelligence to be inherent in the material body would be making the double mistake of thinking that he first gained and then lost these faculties, through one and the same medium. According to that belief, he would be subordinating himself utterly to what is termed matter. The Christian Scientist, on the other hand, dwelling constantly in the fact of man's spiritual origin, rises above all belief in the decay and decline of faculties, in proportion as he grasps the fact that creator and creation are respectively Spirit and spiritual, and therefore immortal. He denies all belief in opposites, and strives for that spiritual singleness of vision which carries with it the Master's promise that "thy whole body shall be full of light."
Realizing the great need of metaphysical study and of spiritualization of thought, the student expects gain rather than loss as the years roll by, and he is joyously bent on carrying out our Leader's instruction with regard to "improving moments before they pass into hours" (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 230). His whole thought is dedicated to the study of Truth and Love, to the quest of spiritual life and its demonstration; hence day by day fear and materiality are losing their hold upon him. He gradually ceases to believe in or to experience the deleterious effects of time, because he has learned to deny mortal origin and to depend entirely upon his heavenly Father for every one of his faculties. He knows that God's gift to His image and likeness is that of complete and immortal reflection, and that life and intelligence thus bestowed by spiritual reflection are eternal gifts which never can be withdrawn. So he rejoices more understandingly in the apostle's scientific declaration that "every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning." Denying all supposition of decrepitude, decay, and death in God's perfect creation, he claims man's birthright of continuous, harmonious, spiritual unfoldment.
Anyone yielding to the belief in mental apathy might imagine that time can bring him moral or other gain, without personal effort on his part. The Christian Scientist combats mental laziness and mortal mind's perpetual tendency toward procrastination, and he ceases to look to time either for any loss or any gain. Christ Jesus rebuked inert dependence upon time and physical causation, so called, when he said so rousingly: "Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest? behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest."
