Article May 12, 1917 Issue

Time and Eternity

THORWALD SIEGFRIED

Time is a term used by mortals to express their sense of something to be overcome in experiencing the good they are seeking; but so long as good is conceived of in thought as being material, this sense of resistance is inevitable, for our thought of matter involves the time element at every step. This explains in part the progress of the Christian Science movement, the teachings of which exclude the possibility of matter's existence as real, and accord quite definitely with the declaration of the angel of whom we read in the tenth chapter of Revelation, who had "in his hand a little book open," and who said that "there should be time no longer."

Any one can experience some concept of time's unreality by considering the universal inability to conceive of limits before which there was no time and beyond which it will not continue. This inability is responsible for the general belief which considers eternity to be merely time extended indefinitely. The contradiction involved in this belief is seen when it is considered that eternity is inseparable from infinity, and that time can never become infinite; the mortal concept of day and year is a very definitely measurable one, and it remains measurable and finite, however large the aggregation of days or years, like the units of which the aggregation is composed. As Mrs. Eddy writes on page 468 of Science and Health: "Eternity, not time, expresses the thought of Life, and time is no part of eternity. One ceases in proportion as the other is recognized."

The real reason for the inability of mortals to ascribe external limits to time is that its limitations are internal, are part of itself. Limitation is the very essence of time, and therefore it can seem to continue until, and only until, mortal belief gives place to spiritual understanding. To limit limitation is to destroy it, and to destroy it is to prove that its only existence is and was a hypothetical one. This proof consists in the knowledge that all good is present now, not separated from us by any sense of time or space. Health, wisdom, and substance are present, and are known by spiritualized consciousness; and when by means of true prayer in Christian Science this fact is made plain to one suffering from disease, ignorance, or lack of any kind, the time clock, so to speak, which recorded the beginning and progress of evil in human affairs, is turned back until the whole of the false supposition is obliterated.

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