Today there are influences actively working to explain away the resurrection of Christ Jesus as myth, metaphor, or as anything less than the plain fact, recorded in the Gospels, of physical resurrection. These influences come from materialistic political or economic systems, from overextended natural sciences, and even from thoughtful and deeply concerned Christian theologians. Christian Scientists need to be alert to these influences and their continuous but often scarcely perceptible erosion of the Gospel record. They need to identify and counter them with vigor, love, and a presentation of their own convictions as thorough and as dedicated as that of the disbelievers.
Life is fundamental. It is not by-product or end product. Life is substance, original, self-existent, self-sustaining. It is not dependent on something other than itself for existence or something external to itself for expression. It is not organic or animal; it does not express itself by organizing or animating matter.
Life expresses itself in living. As understood in Christian Science, Life is God, Spirit, the divine Principle of existence. Its expression is in individual spiritual ideas, in spiritual man and spiritual universe. That the universe exists in Life is a more accurate statement than this one: that life exists in the universe.
