"PASSED FROM DEATH UNTO LIFE"

IN general mankind believes that man draws nearer to death with the passing of each year, indeed with the passing of each day and hour. This supposition is based on the belief that everything has a beginning and an ending, that everything is either coming or going, appearing or disappearing. According to this shortsighted conception, birth and death determine man's existence.

Christian Science throws the light of eternal and spiritual Truth on this assertion and exposes it as a fatal error. In conformity with the Bible this Science reveals the spiritual fact that man is born of God, Spirit, that he coexists with Him, and therefore reflects eternal Life. Christian Scientists are cognizant of this fact and apply it to advantage in their daily lives.

Jesus once said (John 5:24), "He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life." Does not this statement indicate unequivocally that our great Master considered the dead to be those who remain in ignorance and unbelief and that as our understanding of God and His Christ increases, we pass from death to life?

Christian Scientists are today proving that they too, through acceptance and application of the truth, have "passed from death unto life." They were dead in ignorance and fear, in sin and hopelessness. Today they are proving that they live in health, happiness, harmony, and joy. They are in large measure living up to Mrs. Eddy's expectation expressed in the following words on page 246 of Science and Health: "Life is eternal. We should find this out, and begin the demonstration thereof." To do this, we must give up our belief in death as an event which must sooner or later come to pass.

The great Apostle Paul divested life and death of their material forms when he said, "To be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace" (Rom. 8:6). In these words we see that life and death are mental states, that is, states of consciousness. Paul did not say that to be carnally-minded leads to death, but that it is death itself; nor did he say that to be spiritually-minded leads to life, but that it is life itself!

Paul also pointed out that "the carnal mind is enmity against God." These words indicate the absolute necessity of changing one's mental attitude, of gaining an understanding of man's relationship with God. Christian Science teaches us convincingly that God is infinite Life and that man is His perfect reflection. The more conscientiously we accept this religion in our lives and the better we demonstrate its truths, the better we shall understand God and the more of eternal Life we shall demonstrate. For did not Jesus say (John 17:3), "This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent"?

It is not true that we are drawing ever nearer to death. If, after having "passed from death unto life," we were again to turn toward death, we should have to make a direct turn about. After we have come out of darkness into light, are we content again to return to darkness? After we have awakened from the night to day, are we willing to return to the night? What a contradiction! Life alone can lie before us, life independent of calendar years.

Since God, who is the Life of man, is eternal, never ending, never dying, man too must exist eternally. The spiritual understanding of the ever-presence of the Christ, the eternally harmonious pulsating presence of Life, destroys the belief that age, sickness, accident, or any other circumstance can endanger or extinguish man's life.

We should begin to demonstrate that man can never lose Life, nor can Life lose man and that neither man nor Life can ever be in danger. We should cease to entertain the thought of death as something to be faced sooner or later. The apparently harmless remark that we can no longer accomplish what we once were able to accomplish implies the thought of death. The words "no longer" indicate resignation and point downward, not upward. We shall be able to accomplish all we need to accomplish, and that more expertly, to the degree that with each succeeding hour we understand we are passing still further from death to life.

Mrs. Eddy writes on page 246 of Science and Health, "Except for the error of measuring and limiting all that is good and beautiful, man would enjoy more than threescore years and ten and still maintain his vigor, freshness, and promise."

Christian Scientists agree with Paul, who said of himself, "I die daily" (I Cor.15:31). We die daily as each day we put off something of the old man, something of Adam. That is the only death there is; there is no other. The more mortality we put off each day, the more we gain eternal Life. This daily dying, with its rising line of spiritualized thinking, finds its expression in restoration to health, in constant well-being, in increasing dominion over evil and matter.

We truly live only as we love, as we reflect divine Love. In I John (3:14) we read, "We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren." Here love and life merge into one concept. Mrs. Eddy expresses a similar thought when she says (Poems, p.7),