Men believe, almost universally, that they are subject to age; that they begin as mortals and pass through the restrictive stages of so-called infancy, youth, maturity, and decay. Christian Science is setting aside this false concept with its teaching that in reality man is the perfect idea of God, divine Principle, and that since Principle does not change or age, man, the reflection of Principle, does not change or age. As we become more conscious of true identity as the reflection of ceaseless, changeless Principle—Life, Truth, Love— the belief in age lessens, and so the evidence of age is less and less pronounced in human experience.
In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mary Baker Eddy writes (p. 244), "Man in Science is neither young nor old." Christian Science spiritually educates men and women out of the belief that advancing years bring decrepitude by giving them a spiritual understanding of the fact that man is the immortal idea of Life, not touched by passing years. It teaches them that their only real selfhood exists forever at the standpoint of invariable spiritual ability, capacity, strength, and joy. The understanding of man's spiritual, inviolable, unbroken sonship with God dispels human ignorance. Ignorance of the truth of being causes one to measure development, knowledge, proficiency, strength, and the like largely by the years which have intervened since human birth and to classify the fitness and capability of men and women according to their age bracket.
Mrs. Eddy exposes the limitations which follow the recording of ages. Mortal thought, obsessed with the effort to produce material efficiency, has put into operation in business and industry many limiting rules relating to age. For example, it would put the blight of inefficiency upon the individual worker who reaches a certain age, although in many cases capability, even to human sense, is at its highest and knowledge acquired through long experience is of the utmost value. It accepts the false viewpoint that succeeding birthdays mean impairment of faculties or ability, not realizing that thinking of oneself and others in terms of material age is the error which writes the heaviness and burden of advancing years upon the foreheads of men.
In this false concept of existence, youth, so widely cherished by the human mind as desirable and delightful, sometimes manifests rashness and lack of wisdom which lead to the making of mistakes that often seem difficult to efface. Middle age, generally regarded as a period of achievement and fruition, is at times prone to yield to folly. From old age mortal thought turns with dread, not realizing that salvation from old age must include salvation from all belief in age, whether young, middle, or old. Such deliverance demands spiritualization of thought through the replacing of the false concept of man as impermanent and mortal with the true concept of him as the eternal reflection of God.
It includes also overcoming the sins which accompany the belief in corporeality. Christian Science enables us to do this by lifting thought above fleshly desires and indulgences into love of the good and pure, through routing out apathy and idleness with spiritual alertness and awareness, through clearing out self-will, self-justification, and self-love with true humility and unselfed service, and through replacing envy and hate with spiritual love and forgiveness.
To think of ourselves in terms of time and of human experience is to make the false admission of a beginning and an ending, thus associating ourselves with the merciless belief in mortality which urges mankind toward deterioration and dissolution. Isaiah admonishes us (Isa. 2:22), "Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils: for wherein is he to be accounted of?" Let us cease to believe in man as organized matter, subject to material conditions, and rise to the spiritual consciousness of life as the reflection of all-intelligent Mind. Then we shall bring into our human experience the divine wisdom that is not dependent on accumulation of years, the spiritual endurance and stability that cannot be measured by matter, and the winsome joy and happy zest that are not confined to childhood.
Looking longingly toward youth which has fled sinks one's concept of life into the disheartening belief of mortality instead of lifting it into the joyous acceptance of immortality now. This shortens rather than lengthens the human life span. Trying to imitate youth robs one not only of dignity but of poise and true beauty. Since youth is as much a state of mortal belief as is age, why court youth? We should abandon the sense of time, with its attending frailties and disappointments, as a measurement of man's status and seek rather to show forth the spiritual fact of immortality through humble and steadfast effort to demonstrate man's oneness with God.
There is nothing in mere youthful beauty which can compare with the unfolding beauty of spiritual loveliness expressed in kind deeds; nothing in the so-called strength and endurance of youth which approaches the stability of the strength of spiritual integrity, purity, and wholehearted reliance on God. Striving to attain the understanding of immortality rather than to retain a material sense of youth, seeking to rise above the flesh rather than to find comfort in it, we experience effective spiritual resistance to the belief of old age.
So-called youth must eventually appear to become old age until belief in time and matter is dropped through the spiritual understanding of man's likeness to his eternal Maker. If we are to escape the final accusation of aged matter, we must refute the argument of material sense that man is mortal and recognize him as incorporeal, eternal, spiritual, in whom the beauty of holiness and the imperishable glory of Mind are now and forever expressed.
Religious history furnishes wonderful examples of the power of immortal Truth to supply spiritual strength and eternal newness to those who follow it. There is the record of Moses, who after years of consecrated service to his people found that at the age of one hundred and twenty "his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated" (Deut. 34:7). John, the beloved disciple and untiring Christian worker, was in what the human mind termed advanced years when he wrote the book of Revelation, with its deep insight into spiritual truth and its prophecy of the great spiritual unfoldment of good which is now coming to the world through Christian Science.
Mrs. Eddy defines "year," in part, as "space for repentance" (Science and Health, p. 598). True repentance includes reformation, and this means progress—a going forward. Advancing years should mean to us a better putting into practice of what we already know of Truth, a fuller appreciation and demonstration of our Leader's revelation of the presence now of immortality and eternal harmony. They should mean years filled with the accomplishment of spiritual good, years in which sin, disease, and death are disappearing and divine reality is appearing. Advancing years should show forth bloom not blight, fruition not barrenness, gracious adjustment not unbending brittle-ness. They should be characterized by mellowness not decadence, satisfaction not emptiness, and joy not sorrow. Demonstrating the scientific fact of the continuity of real existence, as set forth in Christian Science, we may experience now a lengthening of days through a giving up of the limiting sense of time. We may claim and manifest the undiminishing usefulness, ability, and might which divine Mind is forever imparting".
The days which make up the years of unfolding wisdom, beauty, and holiness are the ever spiritually clearer views of God and man. In these days, our Leader tells us (ibid., p. 584), "The objects of time and sense disappear in the illumination of spiritual understanding, and Mind measures time according to the good that is unfolded." In Mind's day of unfading spiritual glory there is no time, no matter, no youngness and no oldness, but the brightness of eternality and immortality now.
