MAN lives in Life, God, therefore man lives immortally. But the world in general regards mortal existence as life, and so defers any effort to live immortally until it has indulged the varied beliefs of mortal life, including death. Hence to know and manifest God, or Life, it is imperative to comprehend the teaching of Christian Science regarding both Life and death. Among many other blessings, restoration to health is involved; for as Mrs. Eddy writes on page 79 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," "Thousands of instances could be cited of health restored by changing the patient's thoughts regarding death." An essential aid to change of thought regarding death is the discarding of any agreement with the world's concept of that term, through the acceptance of the exact definition of it as given in Christian Science.
Consider, then, the Christianly scientific analysis of "death," as given in the Glossary of Science and Health (p. 584). It may be helpful to remember, while pondering it, that each clause refers to the subject itself, and that the analysis includes several definitions of the subject. It reads: "Death. An illusion, the lie of life in matter; the unreal and untrue; the opposite of Life. Matter has no life, hence it has no real existence. Mind is immortal. The flesh, warring against Spirit; that which frets itself free from one belief only to be fettered by another, until every belief of life where Life is not yields to eternal Life. Any material evidence of death is false, for it contradicts the spiritual facts of being."
This statement sets up a view of what is to be overcome in order to demonstrate Life, somewhat as the second chapter of Genesis contrasts a false sense of creation with the true creation, which is set forth in the first chapter of Genesis. Actually the analysis presents a summation of mortality—not to be accepted as pertaining to God's man—of that to which the Scriptures refer in the sayings, "Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils: for wherein is he to be accounted of?" and, "To be carnally minded is death." It illumines and enlarges the meaning of the words of the twenty-third Psalm, "the valley of the shadow of death"—the whole valley, the entire gamut of beginning, continuance, decay, and dissolution of the shadow called mortal existence. The analysis indicates the illusory nature of corporeality, which neither appears nor disappears in divine reality.
