Editorial May 29, 1915 Issue

Eternal Youth

John B. Willis

Perhaps no question has received more attention at the hands of the race than that as to the nature of life, and yet even educated Christian thought about life has for the most part always embraced a palpable contradiction, and is still contending for it. People have been led to believe that in a universe of divinely supported life, decay and decrepitude have legitimate place. A perfect cause is said to have begotten imperfect effects! Thus wedded in belief, life and death have been wedded in experience, and the extent of humanity's bondage to this false sense is indicated by the seeming strangeness and far removal from possible experience of the teaching of Christian Science, which declares for the unbroken continuity of life; that "except for the error of measuring and limiting all that is good and beautiful, man would enjoy more than threescore years and ten and still maintain his vigor, freshness, and promise" (Science and Health, p. 246).

The beginning and growth of this enslavement are distinctly traceable. Children are conceived and brought forth in the shadow of fear. The possibilities attending their birth often beget a state of trembling in their parents, for weeks or months before the event, and as in the instance of every other material concept, the babe begins to die the moment it begins to live. This fate is contributed to and assured by belief in heredity, whose blighting effects are chronicled in unnumbered weaknesses, disfigurements, and imperiling predispositions from which mortal sense knows no escape. Furthermore, all are taught that life has its inevitable accompaniment of sickness, and that the law which decrees its termination is irresistible because divine; that life cannot continue unbroken, though its immediate support is "from everlasting to everlasting"!

Over against this hopelessly confused sense of things stands the instinctive and ever increasing resistance of humanity to its influence and effects,—a resistance which has given materia medica and its experimentations such a large place in human history. In his vain search for the fabled elixir, Ponce de Leon but gave spectacular emphasis to that universal longing expressed in the saying from the book of Job, "All that a man hath will he give for his life." Hence the pertinence of Jesus' words, "I am come that they [mankind] might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly."

Send a comment to the editors

We'd love to hear from you!

Easily submit your testimonies, articles, and poems online.

Submit

Eternal Youth

We'd love to hear from you!

Sign up for unlimited access