Editorial September 13, 1913 Issue

Not Death, but Life

Archibald McLellan

Quite recently the attention of passers-by was attracted by the announcement, on a bulletin board at a church door, of a sermon about to be preached, under this title, "Death, God's Gift to Man." What arguments were brought forward to sustain this proposition we do not know, but the fact that Christ Jesus, who came to do "the will of the Father," devoted so much of his time and ministry to the work of preventing and overcoming death, that by far the largest part of the four gospels is given over to an account of the wonderful works of this kind which he performed, rather negatives the theory that God is the author of death and that it is His gift to man.

Jesus' own utterance on this subject to the people at Capernaum is significant of his views on what really constituted God's gift to man. He said, "My Father giveth you the true bread from heaven, for the bread of God is he which cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world." Paul also had something very definite to say on this subject, and he certainly did not hold the same views as apparently does the clergyman whose subject was announced on the bulletin board. This great apostle of Christ, in writing to the Romans, said, "For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord;" and again he declared, "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death." To the Corinthians he wrote, "The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death," and he was no less certain of his ground when he wrote to Timothy, "Our Saviour Jesus Christ, . . . hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel."

It would be difficult to conceive of a more discouraging and hopeless proposition than that God is the author of sin and death, because, if this were true, all hope of overcoming these enemies would have to be abandoned, unless there is somewhere a power greater than God. To believe that God finds it necessary to use sin and death in order that He may harmoniously govern His universe is equally discouraging, and Christian Science, in controverting this fallacious belief, thus giving courage to those who through the acceptance and demonstration of its teachings have been awakened to its falsity, is doing more for the salvation of humanity than has been done otherwise from Jesus' time to the present. That mankind has not really assented to the proposition that death is a gift from God, although it has largely subscribed to it as a matter of theology, is proved by the efforts which men have made in all ages to defeat this "last enemy," even though it makes its approach in the guise of "the will of divine Providence."

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