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.
