Do some of us find difficulty in understanding the nothingness of matter and of the human concept of time? Do the calendar and the clock, measuring and limiting time and enthroning matter, dim our vision of eternity? Understanding the nothingness of matter and time is essential in Christian Science, and so my experience in working out this problem may prove helpful.
When Mary Baker Eddy, in elucidating her discovery of Christian Science, announced the then revolutionary doctrine of the nothingness of matter and time, her declaration met with instant and almost universal rejection from thinkers, both religious and secular. Logically in her writings does she uncover matter's unreality, its nothingness. Sharp is the line of demarcation she draws between the truth of eternity and the human concept of time in her statement in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (pp. 468, 469): "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."
Enlightenment began for me at a Christian Science lecture many years ago, when a young student of Christian Science. The lecturer, speaking of time and eternity, stated in effect that the human concept of eternity is time indefinitely extended; that an extension of anything must start and end somewhere and sometime, and therefore is finite, not God-created. Eternality as taught in Christian Science, the lecturer further stated, is always now. That which is "always now" never began, nor can it end; it is infinite, unchangeable.
