Some translators of the New Testament render the phrase, "there should be time no longer," "there shall be no further delay," indicating that the conditions named in the prophecy were capable of immediate fulfillment. Whether viewed in the light of this modern rendering or that of the translators of the King James Version, which seems to imply the complete cessation of time, the fact remains that, as Mary Baker Eddy states on page 598 of Science and Health, "Time is a mortal thought, the divisor of which is the solar year." And on page 468 of the same book she says: "Eternity, not time, expresses the thought of Life, and time is no part of eternity. One ceases in proportion as the other is recognized. Time is finite; eternity is forever infinite."
The foregoing citations show that what is ordinarily regarded as time is but a finite concept of the human mind, whereas eternity is the infinite, spiritual fact. The latter is real; the former is unreal. Therefore all conclusions based upon belief in the actual existence of time are fallacious. Likewise every experience or condition into which the element of time enters is, in the absolute sense, erroneous. The Bible declares that "the things which are seen"—material objects, cognized by the senses—"are temporal; but the things which are not seen"—not apparent to the senses —"are eternal." Then nothing finite, material, mortal, nothing that seems to have beginning and end, nothing that appears to exist in time, or for a time, is real, in the absolute sense of that term. Nothing limited or subject to limitation ever had any actual or divine reality. Therefore the material body and its conditions of disease and mortality are not real. That is, they have no spiritual, divine substance. If they had, they would be indestructible and eternal.
All kinds of so-called physical disease require time in which to exist and develop. Disease, in order to appear real, must first have origin, or cause, then a place in which to be manifested, then time in which to continue, and, finally, law to sustain it. According to Christian Science, disease has none of these. God, divine Mind, is the only cause, and being infinitely good and perfect, does not cause disease, pain, or suffering. Since all is Mind and its perfect spiritual ideas, there is no matter or material body in or on which disease can be, or obtain. There is no time in which disease can exist or develop because eternity, not time, is the ever-present divine fact. There is no law to perpetuate disease because all real law is the law of God, infinite good, and is, therefore, the law of perpetual health and harmony. It will be seen, then, that evil, whether in the form of sin, disease, or death, has no origin, no history, and no continuity. It is now, always was, and always will be, unreal.
