Perhaps the most comforting thought that Christian Science brings to its students is the assurance, yea, the conviction, that there is no death. St. Paul tells us that Christ Jesus "hath abolished death." Death, Christian Science teaches, is but one phase of the belief of life in matter. This belief of life in matter is identical with the carnal or mortal mind, which Jesus called the flesh. In "Christian Healing" Mary Baker Eddy makes this thought-provoking statement (p. 9): "Life in matter is a dream: sin, sickness, and death are this dream. Life is Spirit; and when we waken from the dream of life in matter, we shall learn this grand truth of being."
Death, like fear, disease, and sin, is an illusion of false material sense, much like the illusion called the horizon, the imaginary line where sky and ocean seem to touch each other. As we all know, no one ever crossed the horizon. In like manner no one ever experiences death. One never finds it. If someone were to take a journey on a ship, the ship would disappear over the horizon from the observation point of the people at the shore. But the traveler on board the ship would be completely unaware of having passed the horizon. In like manner one who passes from our sight in what we call death is not conscious of death. To us death seems to have occurred, but not to him. Just as there is no crossing of the horizon, so there is no death, because both are illusions.
If our departed friends could speak to us, they would assure us that they are now, just as we are, enjoying life, peace, harmony, and blessedness, and that there is therefore no need for grief and sorrow. Of a consecrated worker in the vineyard of the Father who had passed on, our Leader writes (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 296): "He is wiser to-day, healthier and happier, than yesterday. The mortal dream of life, substance, or mind in matter, has been lessened, and the reward of good and punishment of evil and the waking out of his Adam-dream of evil will end in harmony,—evil powerless, and God, good, omnipotent and infinite." What we need is a clearer, deeper understanding of the true facts of Life, God, and man in God's likeness.
