NEVER depriving humanity of aught that is good, Christian Science goes farther, fortifying ancient truths and transmuting ideals commonly held to be remote and impractical into workable rules for daily experience. When Thomas Jefferson set out to draft the Declaration of Independence, he based his argument on truths which he held "to be self-evident." With penetrating insight he stated that the creator has endowed man with certain unalienable rights," among which are "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
Generally speaking, mankind has been disposed to relegate these truths to the category of pious ideals too fine for the stress of everyday usage. Death, rather than life, has seemed the common lot; slavery to vice, disease, and disability has made a sorry picture; grief, adversity, and discontent have bulked too large in the experiences of men for happiness to be universal. Indeed, cynical philosophers have been led to question whether a government founded upon these ideals of Jefferson, apparently so contrary to human experience, could be permanent. But with the inflooding of the light of Christian Science, a transformation takes place: the mist of doubt and incredulity clears away, and these "unalienable rights" are discovered to be divinely ordained, fundamental rules to guide mankind.
First is the right to live. Christian Science reveals that Life is God, that the very act of living evidences oneness of man with the creator. And since Life is God, unending life is one of the basic facts of creation. Jesus of Nazareth thus denned immortality, "And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent." To know God, then, is to live forever. The Christian Scientist, when he perceives the need for a larger sense of Life, seeks it not amid the rush of the world's activities; rather, he strives to expand his knowledge of God, utilizing for instruction the channels at his disposal, the Bible, and "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy. These he acknowledges as his textbooks.
