Our Master said, "The kingdom of heaven is at hand." Then God and heaven,
or Life, are present, and death is not the real stepping-stone to Life and
happiness. They are now and here; and a change in human consciousness, from
sin to holiness, would reveal this wonder of being. Because God is ever
present, no boundary of time can separate us from Him and the heaven of His
presence; and because God is Life, all Life is eternal.
Is it unchristian to believe there is no death? Not unless it be a sin to
believe that God is Life and All-in-all. Evil and disease do not testify of
Life and God.
Human beings are physically mortal, but spiritually immortal. The evil
accompanying physical personality is illusive and mortal; but the good
attendant upon spiritual individuality is immortal. Existing here and now,
this unseen individuality is real and eternal. The so-called material
senses, and the mortal mind which is misnamed _man_, take no cognizance of
spiritual individuality, which manifests immortality, whose Principle is
God.
To God alone belong the indisputable realities of being. Death is a
contradiction of Life, or God; therefore it is not in accordance with His
law, but antagonistic thereto.
Death, then, is error, opposed to Truth,--even the unreality of mortal
mind, not the reality of that Mind which is Life. Error has no life, and is
virtually without existence. Life is real; and all is real which proceeds
from Life and is inseparable from it.
It is unchristian to believe in the transition called _material death_,
since matter has no life, and such misbelief must enthrone another power,
an imaginary life, above the living and true God. A material sense of life
robs God, by declaring that not He alone is Life, but that something else
also is life,--thus affirming the existence and rulership of more gods than
one. This idolatrous and false sense of life is all that dies, or appears
to die.
The opposite understanding of God brings to light Life and immortality.
Death has no quality of Life; and no divine fiat commands us to believe in
aught which is unlike God, or to deny that He is Life eternal.
Life as God, moral and spiritual good, is not seen in the mineral,
vegetable, or animal kingdoms. Hence the inevitable conclusion that Life is
not in these kingdoms, and that the popular views to this effect are not up
to the Christian standard of Life, or equal to the reality of being, whose
Principle is God.
When "the Word" is "made flesh" among mortals, the Truth of Life is
rendered practical on the body. Eternal Life is partially understood; and
sickness, sin, and death yield to holiness, health, and Life,--that is, to
God. The lust of the flesh and the pride of physical life must be quenched
in the divine essence,--that omnipotent Love which annihilates hate, that
Life which knows no death.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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