Resurrection from the dead (that is, from the belief in death) must come to
all sooner or later; and they who have part in this resurrection are they
upon whom the second death has no power.
The sweet and sacred sense of the permanence of man's unity with his Maker
can illumine our present being with a continual presence and power of good,
opening wide the portal from death into Life; and when this Life shall
appear "we shall be like Him," and we shall go to the Father, not through
death, but through Life; not through error, but through Truth.
All Life is Spirit, and Spirit can never dwell in its antagonist, matter.
Life, therefore, is deathless, because God cannot be the opposite of
Himself. In Christian Science there is no matter; hence matter neither
lives nor dies. To the senses, matter appears to both live and die, and
these phenomena appear to go on _ad infinitum_; but such a theory implies
perpetual disagreement with Spirit.
Life, God, being everywhere, it must follow that death can be nowhere;
because there is no place left for it.
Soul, Spirit, is deathless. Matter, sin, and death are not the outcome of
Spirit, holiness, and Life. What then are matter, sin, and death? They can
be nothing except the results of material consciousness; but material
consciousness can have no real existence, because it is not a living--that
is to say, a divine and intelligent--reality.
That man must be vicious before he can be virtuous, dying before he can be
deathless, material before he can be spiritual, is an error of the senses;
for the very opposite of this error is the genuine Science of being.
Man, in Science, is as perfect and immortal now, as when "the morning stars
sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy."
With Christ, Life was not merely a sense of existence, but a sense of might
and ability to subdue material conditions. No wonder "people were
astonished at his doctrine; for he taught them as one having authority, and
not as the scribes."
As defined by Jesus, Life had no beginning; nor was it the result of
organization, or of an infusion of power into matter. To him, Life was
Spirit.
Truth, defiant of error or matter, is Science, dispelling a false sense and
leading man into the true sense of selfhood and Godhood; wherein the mortal
does not develop the immortal, nor the material the spiritual, but wherein
true manhood and womanhood go forth in the radiance of eternal being and
its perfections, unchanged and unchangeable.
This generation seems too material for any strong demonstration over death,
and hence cannot bring out the infinite reality of Life,--namely, that
there is no death, but only Life. The present mortal sense of being is too
finite for anchorage in infinite good, God, because mortals now believe in
the possibility that Life can be evil.
The achievement of this ultimatum of Science, complete triumph over death,
requires time and immense spiritual growth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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