DUE to false education human thought has accepted as veritable the testimony of the so-called material senses to the effect that life is mortal, that it has both beginning and end; for to these senses it appears that life is matter-created, matter-sustained, and matter-destroyed. While accepting these beliefs, but still clinging to the hope of immortality, mankind has assumed in a vague and unreasoning way that eternal or unending life begins after the experience called death.
These were the theories and beliefs out of which the thought of Mary Baker Eddy was lifted by the spiritual revelation and discovery of Christian Science which came to her because of her receptivity to the truth of being, the spiritual truth which Christ Jesus presented by precept and proof. Mrs. Eddy's spiritual intuition and discernment led her to see that Christ Jesus based his thinking, and hence his words and works, upon the truth that God is the divine Principle or creator of man and the universe; that since God is Spirit and good, His creation, man and the universe, is spiritual, good, harmonious, and perfect.
Following the example of the Master, Mrs. Eddy accepted these truths about God and man as the premise from which she deduced the fact that all material beliefs or unspiritual thoughts and their objectifications or manifestations are unreal. These material beliefs and manifestations, which are denounced and denied by Christian Science as they were by Christ Jesus, include all the limiting theories associated with the sense of time—the extremes of the immaturity and instability of youth, the decrepitude and inability of extreme age, the thought that life and good have beginning and ending—in a word, mortality. Mrs. Eddy saw that whatever has a beginning must also have an ending; that, therefore, man's immortality or life has nothing to do with the human concept of time, because man, made in the image and likeness of God, eternal Spirit, Truth, is spiritually veritable. What a glorious assurance is afforded by this spiritual teaching! God, immutable good, immortal Life, infinite, all-embracing Love, includes and imparts the immutability and immortality of man, his health, happiness, peace, freedom —all of good.
