When Jesus made the statement, "Before Abraham was, I am," he proclaimed the truth of ageless existence, of life without beginning. He set forth the fact of spiritual man as eternal, incorporeal, forever intact and indestructible. Neither malice nor ignorance can destroy the life which reflects Life, Spirit. The Psalmist referred to the supposed span of life as being "threescore years and ten." Statistics, however, show that there is no definite age at which mortal existence ends. Such a belief is a conspiracy against progress and activity.
In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," the textbook of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy writes (p. 430), "When man gives up his belief in death, he will advance more rapidly towards God, Life, and Love." Christian Science reveals God as the only Life, and enables men to resist the belief in death as inevitable, with the confidence born of Jesus' example. Christian Science makes it plain that no condition of seeming suffering, sickness, or poverty justifies belief in death as desirable. Death is an enemy, not a friend; an illusion, not a spiritual fact; and it will eventually disappear through the understanding of Life, God.
The span of our Master's human life was but thirty-three years, and yet in that short time he proved complete mastery over materiality, sin, sickness, and death. He demonstrated immortality. He destroyed death, and exemplified Life. He proved that the real man exists in Mind, Life, now and always, and we should remember that our Leader says (Science and Health, p. 584), "Mind measures time according to the good that is unfolded." Thus, our life is measured not in years, but in accordance with "the good that is unfolded" in our consciousness. The true sense of living is found not in lethargy or stupefying inaction, but in activity and growth. That activity is never finished, because it expresses Mind's activity; and in our real selfhood we exist at the standpoint of eternal unfoldment of good.
