It's never too late to prove at least to some degree man's agelessness. Agelessness, or eternality, is an attribute of God, divine Life and Love. Eternality is expressed throughout God's spiritual creation. It's reflected by man—the spiritual, perfect, immortal likeness of God. Therefore it's inherent in each one of us.
A woman I knew proved this to some extent. She was an active Christian Science practitioner for over fifty years. She was vigorous, perceptive, and animated by divine Love even as she approached her centennial anniversary.
How did my friend do it? She said she started praying about maintaining her freedom when she began her practice of Christian Science. She desired to reflect a Christly countenance. She worked to overcome each limitation associated with age as it came to her thought. Every morning she joyously prayed. She studied with gratitude the weekly Bible Lesson found in the Christian Science Quarterly. Then she strove to live with grace the precepts and truths contained in these Lessons as she went about her daily business.
It should be natural for all of us to pray, to study the inspired Word of God, and to live with a feeling of divine Love's presence and with an understanding of divine Truth's power. Expressing the God-derived qualities of joy, grace, meekness, gratitude, unselfed love, and spiritual understanding helps us to do this and to demonstrate dominion over the beliefs related to advancing years.
In humbly striving to prove man's agelessness, my friend lived a life of Godlike righteousness. Her study of Christian Science gave her an understanding of God and His laws. Her obedience to God's laws— found in the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount, and also expressed in the absolute truths of divine Science—was the very substance of her righteousness. She was faithful to God. She was holy and humble. She was just, pure, merciful. She was unselfed, long-suffering, a peacemaker. There was a rectitude about her life. The book of Proverbs explains that "in the way of righteousness is life; and in the pathway thereof there is no death." Prov. 12:28
Spiritual, immortal man is timeless. This is our true nature.
In her writings, Mary Baker Eddy has stated that teaching Christian Science has increased the longevity of mankind. See Science and Health, p. 348 This doesn't glorify mortality; it glorifies immortal Life, God. In Science and Health Mrs. Eddy explains, "Man is the expression of God's being." And elsewhere in the book she says, "God's being is infinity, freedom, harmony, and boundless bliss." She says further: "Being is holiness, harmony, immortality. It is already proved that a knowledge of this, even in small degree, will uplift the physical and moral standard of mortals, will increase longevity, will purify and elevate character. Thus progress will finally destroy all error, and bring immortality to light." Ibid., pp.470, 481,492
It is largely the belief that we are mortal, separated from God, good, that makes human life miserable and that underlies troubles linked with age. Sin, which springs from this belief, leads to limitation, suffering, and decline. The opposite of living righteously is to live as though we were outside the care and requirements of God's law. The Science of Christianity shows us how to bring our thoughts and lives under the protection of this law. Obedience to His law brings harmony, mental peace, and prosperity to our lives. Moreover, this Science shows us the unreality of sin through revealing the reality and allness of good. The power of Christ, Truth—the saving manifestation of God—destroys sin. It heals disease and resurrects thought from the belief in death. It preserves our well-being and normal functions. It glorifies divine Life.
If we are loving and righteous, yet still face challenges relating to age, is there something else to help us overcome such restrictions and maintain our God-given dominion? We can deal specifically with animal magnetism, the belief that matter is intelligent and evil powerful. We can know that the mesmeric belief of material life cannot stop us from understanding God, Spirit, as our Life and our true being as spiritual. We can grow in our understanding of God and of what the man of God's creating actually is; in other words, we can learn more of who we really are. As we come to know the nature of God, divine Life, we also know more of our own true being as His reflection. God's man is immortal, deathless. Man always has been one with Life, inseparable from his creator; he is so now and always will be.
These truths provide the Christianly scientific basis for progressively overcoming the limiting, universal beliefs of time and mortality, of life in matter. There is no need to accept media promotions or popular, general beliefs about aging. We can follow Christ by waking up from the dream of a beginning and end, of corporeality and finiteness, and by cultivating an understanding of divine Science, of man's preexistence, or his coexistence and coeternality with God.
Jesus said that if we followed him, we wouldn't see death —"Whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die." John 11:26 We follow the Way-shower and prove our oneness with Life through understanding the allness and omnipresence of Spirit, God, and through faithfulness to Spirit in thought and action. The Science of Christ explains that as we understand Life as Spirit, we lose our belief in death. Understanding God's nature as infinite Spirit progressively destroys the deception of finite existence, of so-called material life. Divine Spirit is inorganic, incorporeal, indestructible. Infinite Spirit knows only its own purity, goodness, and power. Spirit expresses itself in man in spirituality and eternal life. And this is our true being.
Through Christ, Truth, we resist the accumulation of mortal misconceptions.
Mrs. Eddy was once asked the following question: "Is it possible to change the aged form to one of youth, beauty, and immortality, without the change called death?" She answered: "In proportion as the law of Truth is understood and accepted, it obtains in the personality as well as character. The deformities and infirmities said to be the inevitable results of age, under the opposite mental impressions, disappear.
"You change the physical manifestations in proportion to your changed thoughts of the effect of accumulative years; expecting an increase of usefulness and vigor from advanced years with as much faith as you look for decrepitude and ugliness, a favorable result would be sure to follow. The added wisdom of age and experience is strength, not weakness, and we should understand this, expect it, and know that it is so, then it would appear." Christian Science Series, May 1, 1889, p. 10
So aging is largely the accumulation of mortal misconceptions, of the suggestions of the carnal mind, which would take over our thoughts and actions. For example, a suggestion of mortal mind may be to give up, to stop striving for spiritual understanding, stop praying, or even eating. We need to rise up, fight, and destroy these aggressive mental suggestions; not give in to them but continue to seek understanding, to pray, and to live in every way possible the truths of Christianity. As we turn to the light of Christ, Truth, we can wake up, continue to grow spiritually, work out our salvation, and be who we truly are: the immortal idea of divine Mind. We can reflect divine Life right now.
Another notion of age is that the functioning of man's faculties may decline. Yet the Science of Christ declares man's immortality. His spiritual capacities cannot deteriorate or become useless. True vision, hearing, memory, and movement are of Mind, God, therefore perpetual. What we know and demonstrate of infinite Mind and man determines the harmony of our bodily functions and the freedom of our activity.
My friend mentioned earlier had a healing connected with the belief of advanced years. She fell backward down a flight of stairs. As a result, she couldn't walk or sleep, lost control of her bodily functions, and needed Christian Science nursing care.
She felt this was simply an imposition of the carnal mind attempting to stop her healing practice. After many sleepless nights, she had an inspired thought that saved her and brought about complete recovery: When Jesus was attacked and crucified, his opponents thought they could get rid of him by getting rid of his body. But Jesus' genuine identity—the divine nature, or Christ—was spiritual, indestructible, and eternal, as he proved. My friend saw that likewise, no false, material law could attack or destroy her real identity, because it was entirely spiritual, not physical, and it was "hid with Christ in God." Col. 3:3
After this inspired realization, my friend had a peaceful sleep for the first time in days. When she woke up, her bodily functions were normal. She soon regained all her strength and walking ability and she resumed her normal activity, including her healing practice.
My friend saw
that nothing could
attack or destroy
her real identity.
Christian Science is not here to make us an ageless mortal, but to show us we are already the immortal, eternal idea of divine Love, and to inspire us to prove it for ourselves and others. In her Miscellaneous Writings, Mrs. Eddy says, "The last appearing of Truth will be a wholly spiritual idea of God and of man, without the fetters of the flesh, or corporeality." Miscellaneous Writings, p. 165 And in another place, referring to the baptism of Spirit and to the final destruction of a mortal sense of life, she says, "The encumbering mortal molecules, called man, vanish as a dream; but man born of the great Forever, lives on, God-crowned and blest." Ibid., p. 205
It is divine Truth and Love that refine and enrich our nature. The power of Truth, understood and adhered to, maintains vigor and the harmonious functioning of the faculties. Abiding in Love's presence through prayer and righteous living is abiding in the presence of health and harmony, in the presence of eternal Life. The understanding of Truth as Life and of Love as Life helps us to prove, step by step, man's agelessness.
Both young men, and maidens;
old men, and children: let them
praise the name of the Lord.
Psalms 148:12, 13
