The human protest against the deterioration of age is well epitomized in the words of Mary Baker Eddy, found in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 248), "Men and women of riper years and larger lessons ought to ripen into health and immortality, instead of lapsing into darkness or gloom." But Mrs. Eddy did more than protest against the pattern of mortality. She provided Christian Science, God's revelation to her of the true order of existence. This great Science, revealing Truth, teaches mankind how to repel the infirmities of age by turning from the mortal model of flesh and fashioning their lives after the model of man made in God's likeness. Our Leader says, continuing on the page quoted, "We must form perfect models in thought and look at them continually, or we shall never carve them out in grand and noble lives."
Man, according to the revelation of Christian Science, is spiritual. He is ageless because the qualities of character and divine ideas out of which God molds him never fade. Such elements of thought as love, truthfulness, and purity are real and indestructible. The knowledge that man is spiritual exposes the spuriousness of the corporeal personality, which suffers from the depletion that haunts all flesh, and gradually breaks down the mental state of self deception that comprises a sinful mortal. Ageless man then appears in the measure that mortality is forsaken and the qualities of God's image are demonstrated in their abundance and freshness.
We catch glimpses of the perfect model in the honesty and justice and mercy of the humane individual. But a clearer view of man as Mind's likeness is needed if the pattern of deterioration is to be prevented from taking its merciless course. One must understand his life as being actually apart from matter, as having no relation to material organs, but as depending upon Spirit for unbroken continuity of strength and usefulness.
