To human sense all life is governed by an accepted concept of time. Man is supposedly subject to a belief of measurement—a beginning and an end. This mistaken, transitory concept of life leads inevitably to death. But Christian Science teaches that this concept is a misapprehension of the actual reality of being and that man, made in the image of God, is constituted of spiritual and enduring ideas, Thus Christian Science awakens us to Truth, and its power pierces the dream of the time-bound world of which we seem to be a part and brings to light timeless spiritual reality. We learn that everything in this dream which appears as matter, as well as the dreamer, is a temporal material sense, from which it is possible to escape now. Being without true substance, matter never has life, whatever human belief may say to the contrary. It is but a mental illusion, to which we seem to give reality by believing it.
Life is God, the infinite divine Mind. God's ideas, His creation, are substance, the enduring substance of 'Truth now and forever. Man the son of God, is conscious of the eternal reality, which he expresses, without past, present, or future. The writer of the book of Ecclesiastes surely must have grasped that the divisions of time into past, present, and future were merely human measurements when he wrote (3:14), "I know that, whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever." He added, "That which hath been is now: and that which is to be hath already been; and God requireth that which is past."
The inspiring challenge that Christian Science presents to us is to lay off transitory errors for reality and so find peace. With the challenge comes the precious promise of healing, the healing of sickness and of sin, of lack and of fear, of all the woes inherent in existence, springing from the false sense of living in matter. Age with its penalizing laws is seen to be a fallacy about man's perpetual completeness, or holiness.
