Article July 31, 1915 Issue

Life Eternal

FRANK H. SPRAGUE

The field of human observation has been pretty thoroughly explored by men of learning in the hope of ascertaining what life is. Crediting the testimony of the physical senses to the effect that the seat of life is in organic matter, the majority of investigators have been beguiled into pursuing their researches at least primarily in that direction. Although the insistent demand of the higher intuitions has constrained theologians to take account of a spiritual nature, the spiritual has been treated as an adjunct to or outgrowth of the physical. In spite of Jesus' trenchant declarations anent material existence, logic and consistency have been put to severe straits by the exponents of traditional religion in the attempt to bridge the impassable gulf between Spirit and matter.

To the thought steeped in materialism it seems incredible that the great Teacher's utterances on the subject were intended to be taken at their face value, for he never dignified sentient existence with the status of life or admitted that such existence was even a stepping-stone to life. He acknowledged but one kind of life, namely, the spiritual impartation of divine Mind; and to this he gave the descriptive name "life eternal," in contradistinction to animate existence, the falsifying sense which purports to evolve from a physical basis and eventuate in death. He even spoke with stern disapproval of the notion that the manifestation of Deity could in any way be involved in or comprised by such conditions as material existence implies.

But instead of taking his pregnant declarations as a criterion of scientific knowledge and testing their value by demonstration, as Jesus bade men do, the schools have undertaken to establish science on a foundation which largely divorces human experience from the Principle of Christianity. In no merely figurative sense the Master referred to those who were laboring under the delusion that life is a thing of sensation, as "dead." He accepted but one estimate or standard of living,—that which testifies to the perfection of the creator as exhibited in the phenomena of holiness, purity, integrity, and harmony. The blunder of looking for the origin of life in atomic structure, electricity, or psychic energy, has beclouded thought and robbed religion of its vitality.

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