Editorial October 24, 1908 Issue

IMMORTALITY

Annie M. Knott

Job's mournful question, "If a man die, shall he live again?" has been asked by many mortals, and who shall say that in most cases doubt has not overshadowed the answer. When material sense prevails doubt will always be present, as it was in Job's case; but when the spiritual sense dominates we shall be able to say as he did later, "I know that my redeemer liveth." Christ Jesus gave the whole world a strong assurance when said, "Because I live, ye shall live also." Every day and hour of his earthly experience was given to proving that Life is not subject to matter, hence not subject to disease or death. On this point we have in Science and Health (p. 349) the unequivocal statement that "neither Life nor man dies;" and on page 581 we are told that the reflection of Truth is "proved to be as immortal as its Principle." Again we read (p. 204). "It is evil that dies; good dies not."

The long centuries of mortal belief and experience all show that material body is not immortal, while spiritual understanding declares that it must be put off, with all the erroneous beliefs which it represents. That the world's thought is changing greatly of late years is evidenced by a statement of Sir Oliver Lodge, in which he declares that the body does not represent the individual, and "that death merely marks the end of a certain grouping of physical materials." He goes on to say that "consciousness, will, honor, love," etc., are "similarly stamped with immortality." Christian Science goes much farther in declaring that everything which is like God, good, is of necessity immortal.

In "In Memoriam" we find a brief but forceful putting of the human sense of separation caused by death, when the poet says,

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