Geriatrics is a much-discussed and publicized department of medicine dealing with old age and its seeming diseases. While recognizing the humanitarian motives for this study, Christian Scientists do not study error or disease in order to find its cause and to heal it. They study the Bible and Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy to learn of God and of the man of His creating. Mortal mind says that there are certain diseases for those who are young, certain other diseases for those who are old. Christian Science declares that neither age nor disease is a part of God's man and proves the unreality of each by its healing works. It reveals man as the expression of God, including no self-destructive element.
The usefulness and life-span of the man of God's creating cannot be measured by the number of times the earth goes around the sun. On page 246 of Science and Health, our Leader makes the following illuminating statements: "Never record ages. Chronological data are no part of the vast forever. Time-tables of birth and death are so many conspiracies against manhood and womanhood. 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." Obedience to this rule enables us to demonstrate ageless being here and now.
Let us measure man's usefulness and strength by God's infinite power and intelligence, for man cannot be separated from God. Just as the sunbeam has no existence, light, or warmth apart from the sun but is the outcome of the sun's own nature, so man is the outcome, the emanation, of God's own nature, the means through which God, Life, expresses His ageless qualities of immortality, strength, intelligence. Because man's real life is God eternally, there is no opportunity for material laws to control his life or its faculties —to dim sight, enfeeble understanding, or paralyze activity.
