Article July 14, 1917 Issue

The "eternal now"

WALTER E. YOUNG

Among the many illuminations of the Scriptures which have come to us through the teachings of Christian Science, none perhaps is more potent for good in human affairs than the spiritual light gained from a metaphysical understanding of Paul's words in his second epistle to the Corinthians, where he says, "Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation."

The human mind is all too prone to hark back to the past or to look with foreboding into the anticipated future, thereby to its own detriment allowing its attention to be diverted from the all important and only real issue, that of the immediate conscious moment, the "eternal now." The student of Christian Science readily perceives that behind all this fear and mental torment involved in looking back or anxiously peering ahead, is the fundamental mortal belief of time; in fact, it may be said that the whole gamut of mortal experience is indissolubly bound up with and in a large measure is the direct effect of the erroneous belief that time is a fixed, irrevocable law, governing man and the universe by a code of innumerable limitations. Thus it may be learned that time, scientifically defined, is but mortal limitation.

Many a burden has been rolled away from human consciousness when the knowledge of God's ever-presence as available now, even in the midst of the seeming clouds of doubt, despair, sickness, or discouragement, has been grasped and made immediate use of. As we progress in Christian Science we learn more and more that effective work is accomplished in the degree of our ability to reject instantly the suggestions of evil which would assail us, and know without parley or compromise evil's proven unreality. This instant rejection and denial of evil in all its phases of pretense and subtlety, if born of the understanding that the divine consciousness is the only existence there really is or can be, will meet the assertions of evil at the point of extinction, and the "eternal now" of infinite, omnipresent good will be demonstrated.

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