ONE meaning of the meaningful First Commandment, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me" (Ex. 20:3), is pointed out by Mary Baker Eddy thus: "Thou shalt have no belief of Life as mortal" (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 19). For many centuries men have believed that the continuity of life is not broken by death, but the fact that men can here and now apprehend the immortality of Life proved by Christ Jesus found no widespread acceptance until the advent of Christian Science. This is a truly momentous advance step in human thinking.
The testimony of the material senses that life is temporary has seemed so overwhelming to the human race that a rational explanation of the immortality of Life has been consigned to the category of an enigmatical problem which men cannot yet solve. And yet as one writer puts it, "The universe is a stairway leading nowhere unless man is immortal."
Mortals have been blind to the fact that Christ Jesus not only understood the endlessness of Life, but proved that each individual can, through understanding God as the alone Life of man, demonstrate his eternality, and his superiority to the entire mortal misconception of life and temporary selfhood. He proved matter and mortality to be substanceless fiction; immortal spiritual Life the divinely substantial fact. His simple prescription for us wherewith to find immortal Life has been repeated often, but its practical import for you and me has remained for Christian Science to bring to light. He said, "This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent" (John 17:3). This inalienable ability to know God as our eternal Life is our priceless possession. Let us claim it, joyously use it, and praise God for it.
