Mrs. Eddy discerned the basis of Christ Jesus' demonstration, namely that Life is eternal and that man is God's reflection. In Science and Health she begins her answer to the question, "What is Life?" by saying (p. 468): "Life is divine Principle, Mind, Soul, Spirit. Life is without beginning and without end. Eternity, not time, expresses the thought of Life, and time is no part of eternity."
From early childhood many mortals are taught to believe that life, intelligence, and substance are in matter, that existence is temporal, and that in the life to come the individual will live in heaven or in hell. Christian Science proclaims what the Bible teaches, namely the eternality of Life and the endless spiritual existence of man, made in God's image and likeness.
From the cradle to the grave, the claim of life in matter is but a series of prolonged daydreams of personal and material sense, which denies and rejects man's spiritual existence as the son of God. The whole import of our Master's mission was to show that either here or hereafter the deathless man found in Christ must be understood and lived by each individual. Through the study and application of Christian Science during the past century, great numbers have enjoyed something of the true sense of life. The understanding of man's perpetual, individual spiritual existence destroys the false concept of man subject to sin, disease, and death.
