WHAT consolation, as the old year passes away and the new is ushered in, to know with a great assurance that, as Mrs. Eddy writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 554), "Being is immortal," that all that is real is permanent, eternal! For some it may be a sad time, the New Year. For have they not perhaps lost, as they think, some one whom they loved? Or perhaps an opportunity has slipped from them that promised well for their happiness. Memory will seek to go back among the shadows of the past, as among its joys; and too often it is with the shadows it lingers.
Now Christian Science does not tolerate its students to dwell dolefully in thought on the sorrows or afflictions of the past, remote or near. It teaches them that good alone is worthy of contemplation, and that if thought should be focused at any time on the ills of human existence, it should only be that some lesson might be learned in order to prevent the recurrence of these ills. Breaking away from the illusions of mortal material sense, Christian Science brings to light the wonders of the creative Principle, God, and reveals the immortality, the eternality, of that divine Principle and its perfect creation. With an understanding of God far beyond that possessed by any other since Christ Jesus, Mrs. Eddy could write on the page of Science and Health referred to above: "There is no such thing as mortality, nor are there properly any mortal beings, because being is immortal, like Deity, —or, rather, being and Deity are inseparable."
To the Christian Scientist, then, there are no breaks in real being. God, to him, is the All-in-all, the infinite One, who never had a beginning; the perfect One, who has always existed, and who, because of His perfection, must continue to exist throughout all eternity. As the Christian Scientist understands God to have existed eternally, so he understands the real creation to have coexisted eternally with God, and that it will continue to coexist with Him forever. God's creation is the complete reflection of Himself. Hence the real creation has always expressed and ever will continue to express the creator perfectly.
