Mankind's curiosity has always led them to ask questions about the end of the world, even as they have asked questions about material beginnings. The subject of last things, the close of the history that began with physical creation, is called in theology eschatology. The topic is receiving new attention. Recently a writer noted, "If the problem of beginnings was the theological issue of the 19th century and the problem of justification by faith the theological issue of the 16th century, the theological issue before the church today is Revelation and the doctrine of Last Things." The Christian Century, April 6, 1966, pp. 425, 426;
The urgent dilemmas of our times are forcing thinkers back to final, or eschatological, questions. In religion, the human mind confronts the staggering "God is dead" and "demythologizing" controversies; in social mores the atavistic "new morality" and like abuses stemming from cultural relativity; in crises-ridden world relations, the prospects of fateful explosions —nuclear or population; in the natural sciences, the running down of the universe, its terminal "heat death" according to the second law of thermodynamics. These dilemmas compel attention to the questions, Is there a final, saving solution? What does it all at last mean? Where does it all at last end?
The Christian Scientist answers as a demonstrator of an imperative Principle, not as a speculator; as an activist in healing the sick and sinner, not as a theorist. He answers as a servant of God and mankind, not as a polemicist. Patiently trusting divine intelligence to point the next step, he optimistically views the future with an eschatology that is not cataclysmic. For him, the glory of the last things is to a degree demonstrable now.
