AT the moment a loved one passes from sight, the suffering human heart of the bereaved cries out for compassion, sympathy, and solace. Christian Science, overflowing with the comfort of God, divine Love, brings the mourner certain and prompt release from the mortal sense of shock, sorrow, and loss and replaces these turbulent beliefs with peace, confidence, and strength.
When the plaintive question arises, "What has happened to my loved one?" the human sufferer finds comfort and enlightenment in these healing words of Mary Baker Eddy, who writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures"(p. 251) : "In the illusion of death, mortals wake to the knowledge of two facts: (1) that they are not dead ; (2) that they have but passed the portals of a new belief. Truth works out the nothingness of error in just these ways."
The basic answer to the question, "What has happened to my loved one?" is, then, "Nothing has really happened to him." Why? Because the entire belief of life in matter—a mortal body, a material earth governed by mortal timetables of birth, growth, maturity, and decay, or, perhaps, by accident or chance—is a mortal dream. Death never really occurs except in the dream of life in matter. All that dies is a mortal sense of life. Man, God's likeness, is not mortal and hence never dies.
