In the eighth chapter of John are these words of Jesus: "Though I bear record of myself, yet my record is true: for I know whence I came, and whither I go."
The record of Jesus concerning himself was true because it bore witness to that which is—spiritual being. Because he was ever conscious of his coexistence with the Father, he could refer to the brief episode of his human career as "a little while." Those to whom he spoke knew neither whence they came nor whither they went. To them, existence with its series of happenings, built upon hope and fear, limitation and perplexity, fraught with suffering and loss, threatened at any moment with termination, was alone that to which they could bear witness.
But to Christ Jesus this phase of mortality with its fortuitous beginning and inevitable, often calamitous, ending was not life. During that "little while" he replaced it for himself and others with the evidence of immortality. Identifying man with his spiritual origin and destiny, the Master dealt unerringly, invincibly, with each phase of error, discerning that its structure was foundationless, its boasted pretensions empty, its seeming power a fraud. "For right reasoning there should be but one fact before the thought, namely, spiritual existence. In reality there is no other existence, since Life cannot be united to its unlikeness, mortality," writes Mary Baker Eddy on page 492 of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures."
