Article September 3, 1921 Issue

"The present immortality"

JOSEPH E. JOHNSTON

If an individual puts to himself the question: Am I mortal or immortal? he puts to himself the fundamental question to which Christian Science at all times and in all circumstances permits but a single answer, and that the right one. Man is immortal here and now. The God who is infinite is not just a superhuman God expressed without limit somewhere. The divine Mind's infinity compels the absolute corollary of the one infinite manifestation. One infinite Mind means one infinite creation, one infinite man, one infinitely right idea as the always present reality. Without limits of time or space, without an element of destructibility or decay, the very reverse of mortal is the one infinite God or Mind and His idea, man and the entire universe.

Mind and its idea being the one infinite reality, where is there anything or an occasion to say of mortality that it is? In all the realm of the real, which must be infinite, can one find aught to identify as finite and mortal? Mind as infinite cause produces infinite effect exactly like its cause. This one can and must scientifically affirm, and quite as much in seeing that the fact leaves no mortality anywhere but proves it to be forever illusion and nothingness. In knowing that mortality is not; that, like evil, it is never person, place, or thing; in relating identity to Mind, where all existence positively is, one is knowing the truth about mortality, which is always demonstrable and helpful because it is always the actual fact. Immortality is, mortality never is. This each one must realize for himself; as Mrs. Eddy says on page 195 of Science and Health, "The point for each one to decide is, whether it is mortal mind or immortal Mind that is causative. We should forsake the basis of matter for metaphysical Science and its divine Principle."

An individual, of course, is chained to matter, in belief, so long as he affirms either openly or covertly that mortality is anything or anywhere. Doing other than throwing one's entire weight of thought, speech, and action on the side of the immortal is attempting the fruitless and impossible task of making suppositional nothing into positive something. As Mrs. Eddy declares further in Science and Health (p. 192), "In Science, you can have no power opposed to God, and the physical senses must give up their false testimony. Your influence for good depends upon the weight you throw into the right scale. The good you do and embody gives you the only power obtainable." How can any man act in accord with the immortal God while admitting that the mortality of the physical senses is, and that he is a part of it? In place of every phase of the so-called mortal, Christian Science presents the immortal as really true.

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