We frequently hear of the weakening or loss of faculties, such as sight, hearing, reason, or memory. This is commonly taken as normal and something to be expected as a result of advancing years; whereas the retention of all the faculties unimpaired throughout the span of human life is regarded as most unusual. But is this view rightly taken? What should be accepted as normal?
According to the Scriptures some of the antediluvians reputedly lived hundreds of years. Later in the Bible we read that "Moses was an hundred and twenty years old when he died: his eye was not dim, nor his natural force abated" (Deut. 34: 7) and that Caleb in his eighty-fifth year was, as he said, "as strong this day as I was in the day that Moses sent me" (Josh. 14: 11). Did those ancient worthies perhaps have a working knowledge of God far above the ordinary? This is easily believable when we ponder Moses' life and experience, throughout which he was divinely led. Those who lived close to God and were conscious of His presence found that their faculties did not diminish.
What are faculties? Are they physical attributes of the body and subject to death? Christian Science shows the physical faculties to be illusions and declares all the faculties of Mind or Life to be spiritual. Mary Baker Eddy writes in the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 486): "Sight, hearing, all the spiritual senses of man, are eternal. They cannot be lost. Their reality and immortality are in Spirit and understanding, not in matter,— hence their permanence."
