Article May 31, 1913 Issue

THE LAW OF LIFE

IRVING C. TOMLINSON, M.A.

One of the most inspiring lessons of the springtime is the teaching that the law of Life is the only law. If one who had always lived where flowers bloom the entire year had found himself in New England a few weeks ago, he might almost have said that so far as nature was concerned death was the only law. The trees were bare, the earth gave no sign of life, the brooklets were held in an icy embrace, and the birds were silent or far away. All this is changed, and everything about us voices the glad message that Life is everywhere manifest. This eternal fact that there is no other law than the law of God, the law of Life, Truth, and Love, is the teaching of Scripture and of Christian Science.

Christ Jesus knew that God manifests Himself only in the law of Life, and so when all the friends of Lazarus were proclaiming the supposed law of death, he asserted the mandate of Life, and Lazarus "came forth." When Jesus' enemies nailed him to a cross, and his form was laid away in the rocky tomb, he did not give way to any false testimony of the senses; he was at work, as our Leader has said, demonstrating that the law of Life is the only law. His resurrection and ascension was God's proclamation to us that we are to know no other law of being save the law of Life. The ever-living Spirit must work the works of Life alone—it has nothing to do with and knows nothing of death.

We are taught in Science and Health, the text-book of Christian Science, that neither sin, sickness, nor death is a manifestation of law; and we learn how to realize under all circumstances that the law of Life, God, is the only law governing us. This inspired book makes plain that through spiritual understanding we may prove eternal Life to be the Principle and law of our being, thereby realizing and manifesting "the power of an endless life." We ask sometimes why we do not now realize the full fruits of this law. "Being haunted by an ideal life," because, as Phillips Brooks writes, "we have within us the beginning and possibility of it," we often wonder why we fall so far short of it. The answer is, that we do not put ourselves into touch with the truth of being. One might have an electric lamp in his house and yet have no light, because there was no wire connecting the lamp with the source of light. Faith and understanding make it possible for us to utilize the law of Life.

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