THE nature of life has ever been a problem to mankind. It has been almost universally believed to commence at human birth and to cease or pass away at death; and always the human mind, so called, has associated life with matter. The tiniest organism that wriggles out its brief hour or day in a drop of water largely consists to human sense of organic matter, possessing the something called life which animates it. As with the animalcule, so it is on a vastly greater scale with men, who apparently consist of organized bodies—highly organized bodies—animated by a vitalizing force, called life. Let either of these, or any other so-called organism, be injured sufficiently, or let them be insufficiently nourished materially, and life, it is claimed, will be destroyed, leaving an inert mass of matter. The point to be noted here is that the belief is that "life," from the lowest to the highest animal forms, is dependent upon matter.
Holding to the position just stated, —a position in agreement with the narrative of a material creation recorded in the second chapter of Genesis, but not with the record of the real spiritual creation given in the first chapter,—men have continued to look upon existence upon earth as a mystery. They have found it impossible to account for themselves,— impossible to find a reason for the beginning of their earthly existence, impossible to find a reason for its ending, impossible to find a reason for the drama enacted between the two extremes, in which joy alternates with sorrow, sickness with health, sin with holiness. Surely, many of them have disconsolately said, there must be an explanation of it all; but not a single one has ever found the solution, or ever will find the solution as long as material existence is considered by them to be real.
But can the reality of material existence be questioned? asks the materialist. If it be the enigmatical thing it is admitted to be, even by the materialist, surely it cannot be going too far to question its reality. Question the reality of material existence! That is precisely what Christian Science does. And not only so, but Christian Science denies the reality, absolutely and altogether, of the existence of any form of matter or of material existence.
