Jesus made this stupendous statement about himself (John 8:14): "I know whence I came, and whither I go." As our Way-shower, he taught us that what he saw and did we could see and do also. Many of us are pressing forward eagerly to gain an understanding of where we are going, but are we as earnestly seeking to know and to contemplate where we have come from? Jesus also said (John 17:5), "Now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was." We too are privileged to pray that prayer and to recognize our primitive and ever-continuing spiritual selfhood as at one with God's glory and perfection.
As thought dwells on this grand vista of man's primitive, unassailable origin and continuity, consciousness rises to heights of inspiration and gains a clearer realization of true existence. True spiritual perspective enables us to learn more of our origin and our destination. Our Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, had this spiritual perspective to such a degree that she was able to write this revealing statement in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 429): "If man did not exist before the material organization began, he could not exist after the body is disintegrated. If we live after death and are immortal, we must have lived before birth, for if Life ever had any beginning, it must also have an ending, even according to the calculations of natural science."
It is only the finite concept of being that claims to chain us to a human span of years and seems to render us unconscious of the eternal life we always have lived and always will live. This limited sense must give way to the expanding truths of spiritual sense. Mrs. Eddy says in "Miscellaneous Writings"(p. 181), "Mortals will lose their sense of mortality—disease, sickness, sin, and death —in the proportion that they gain the sense of man's spiritual preexistence as God's child; as the offspring of good, and not of God's opposite,—evil, or a fallen man."
Life is God, and man emanates from God. There is only one Life flowing through all eternity, and it is the Life we are all living by reflection. The realization of this truth is a present possibility. It is impossible to conceive of a future state of spiritual existence without also being conscious of spiritual preexistence. Past, present, and future are all one in the ever-present allness of eternity. They join in the circle of infinity.
Man does not originate in human birth, nor does his life end in human death. The Bible tells us that death is the last enemy to be destroyed. But how shall we hope to overcome the last enemy unless we see clearly the unreality of the false sense of man's beginning? A material beginning signifies a material ending. Mrs. Eddy writes in Science and Health (p. 258), "Never born and never dying, it were impossible for man, under the government of God in eternal Science, to fall from his high estate." Christ Jesus was not begotten of a human father. He was the only begotten Son of God. This enabled him to prevail over the last enemy, death. The understanding that in reality God is the only Father and Mother of man is helping us today to rout that enemy.
The true concept of our origin and destiny is not abstract, but is provable and usable in everyday life. In a time of great need this concept proved of inestimable value to a student of Christian Science.
A loved one had passed from her sight, and the human sense of home and stability seemed no longer to have meaning or foundation. Mortal mind pressed these questions: "Shall I stay here? Shall I go there?" Over and over again this clamor had to be silenced by the firm declaration of Jesus, quoted at the beginning of the article, "I know whence I came, and whither I go." And this proved to be so; for gently, tenderly, divine Love led her into paths of usefulness and into a higher, deeper understanding of home, companionship, and stability. These gifts of God are in reality within our consciousness and can never be lost.
The realization of continuous existence helps to tear away the limitations of time and to reveal eternity. Time would squeeze mankind into a given span of years and thereby put limits to life, accomplishment, and inspiration. Time is a mortal sense and at no point exists in eternity any more than a straight line abides in a curve.
On one occasion the writer felt unconsciously dominated by a belief of time passing. This resulted in a feeling of pressure and disturbance. She was constantly troubled by the thought of the next thing to be accomplished and the next and the next. Then this message from the Bible came to her: "He that believeth shall not make haste" (Isa. 28:16). "Believe what?" she questioned. "Believe in the ever-present now of eternity? Believe that God's work is finished and that man is now expressing His complete glory?" Yes, that was it. And so she gave up her feverish, limited sense of trying to catch up with God's creation and rested peacefully in the thought of continuous spiritual existence.
Glorious vistas of the "whence" of spiritual creation, and of the "whither" of its unfoldment open up to the student of Christian Science. We stand at the threshold of this realization, awaiting the fuller revelation of the new heaven and the new earth, in which there shall be time no longer.
As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so
walk ye in him: rooted and built up in him, and stablished
in the faith, as ye have been taught.—Colossians 2:6, 7.
