WHEN Christ Jesus, repeating the thought and, in part, the language of the psalmist, declared, "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away," he revealed to his disciples who heard him, and to their succeeding generations, two facts of great import. With impressive brevity he set forth in a single sentence and with perfect assurance the permanency of Truth expressed in "my words," manifestly implying its reality, that is to say, its stable, permanent, and eternal quality. Also, he implied that the human concept of man's future and present abodes termed heaven and earth— comprised in the realms of time and space—are unreal and temporal, and since they are no part of Truth, which is real and permanent, must of necessity pass away, giving place to that spiritual consciousness which comprehends only reality. Speaking of this cogent saying of the Master, Mrs. Eddy says on page 163 of "Miscellaneous Writings": "In no one thing seemed he less human and more divine than in his unfaltering faith in the immortality of Truth. Referring to this, he said, 'Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away!' and they have not: they still live; and are the basis of divine liberty, the medium of Mind, the hope of the race."
The students of Christian Science learn that only to be real and permanent which pertains to God, divine Mind, and to His perfect ideas and their identities. To the person who, perhaps, through his lifetime has given full credence to the evidence of the physical senses, the thought that the material universe and physical man with all his human institutions, except so far as the latter are more or less the expressions of Truth, are after all unreal and ephemeral, comes with something of a mental shock. Unless accompanied by the vision of spiritual being, with its true conception of Life and its concomitants of lasting beauty and holiness, such an experience cannot fail to bring a sense of depression, even of despair. Job, pushing aside the clouds of materiality, saw with clear vision the temporal character of mortal mind and its universe of matter. With a yet fuller range of spiritual insight, Christ Jesus beheld the perfect universe of Mind, hence could not fail to understand the unreality of the material counterfeit. Paul uttered the same great truth in familiar language, "The things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal."
Our revered Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, prepared through great tribulation, not only grasped anew the significance of the Nazarene's message as to the truth of being and revealed it to the world, but she also discovered the spiritual law governing the universe of reality with which he dealt. The operation of this law, its method and application, she elucidated so definitely that all who approach the study of Christian Science with faithfulness, obedience, and humility become its demonstrators and beneficiaries. Divine law, the rule and system of Truth's operation, the Christian Scientist learns, is no less stable and eternal than Truth itself. In short, whatever grows out of divine Principle, emanating from and expressing divine Mind, is as permanent and unchangeable as Mind itself. The parable of the houses built, the one upon a stable foundation, the other upon an unstable—shifting sands—illustrates the point under discussion. The former, set on the stable rock, Truth, withstood the attacks of the blind, unreasoning forces of the elements; the latter fell, because its foundation of false premises was unequal to the assaults of error.
