Article March 26, 1921 Issue

Life Eternal

ETHEL ADÈLE DENNY

The Christian world is very familiar with the text, "And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent." At times these words have seemed inadequate and ineffectual comfort in the face of the supposed inexorable witness of death. Indeed, the Bible is affluent in its promises of eternal life to him who serves God. The children of Israel were saved whenever they turned absolutely to God for protection. Elijah, under the juniper tree, almost persuaded to give up, found "a cake baken on the coals, and a cruse of water at his head." Daniel died not in the lions' den, nor did the furnace seven times heated consume the Hebrew children. All of these God protected.

Of this divine protection set forth in the Bible the very unsatisfactory explanation has been made that it was not the gift of God to all for all time but a special favor to a few in a time long past; that at present God improves the lives of His children by medicine, by the cunning of man rather than by the power of Almighty Spirit,—and thus protected, a man perishes by fire and sword, by pestilence and accident. It is obvious, then, that while mortal man has desired eternal life, and sought for it in devious ways, he has not found it because he has not known what it was. Instead of looking for Life, he has looked for lives, for a material body preserved from day to day to an eternity of added days and years. In other words, he has looked for eternal life in matter instead of in Mind.

Now when in sickness, accident, poverty, and trial, the righteous man turns to God and is delivered, the Bible promises are proved true. It is just this that Christian Science demonstrates. Christian Science is not only teaching but proving that whatever was true yesterday is inevitably true now. It is revealing the fact that the works of the prophets and of Jesus were demonstrations of the eternally present, operating law of Spirit, which operates to-day as completely and perfectly as at any time.

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