Editorial May 20, 1922 Issue

Proofs of Immortality

Albert F. Gilmore

The student of the Bible seeking proofs of the continuity of life finds but meager evidence in the Old Testament. The subject is touched upon but lightly, and by inference rather than directly. In the translation of Enoch and the disappearance of Elisha in the whirlwind, in David's keen expectation of "pleasures for evermore," in the Preacher's assurance that "the spirit shall return unto God who gave it," and in Daniel's conviction that many that sleep shall awake, the child of faith finds a basis for the hope of immortality. Christ Jesus came upon the stage of human affairs with a message both explicit and authoritative as to the unreality of the experience termed death, and the inevitable corollary of this great fact,—the continuity and indestructibility of Life. "This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God," and, "He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live," leave no uncertainty as to the Nazarene's convictions and teachings regarding man's eternal existence. In proof of his precepts, his crowning glory—his reappearance after the crucifixion—supplies the consummate example and indisputable evidence. How this fact may be translated into terms of human experience, to reassure and encourage mankind, is the problem solved by Mrs. Eddy in Christian Science.

From the standpoint of common belief it is natural that the seeming loss of intimate friends through the experience called death should stimulate and enhance concern in the proofs of immortality. Grief over the loss of loved ones, together with an intense yearning for assurance of the continuity of individual existence and the well-being of some departed dear one, has served to center attention upon any religious belief claiming to afford justification of the hope to which the stricken hearts have so earnestly clung. Hence the revival of interest since the great war in whatever purports to furnish evidence of immortality, or claims to reveal the conditions under which those who have passed beyond are believed to continue their existence.

Christian Scientists know the futility of drawing conclusions from the hypothesis that life and intelligence have their abiding place in matter. Mrs. Eddy has so plainly taught that all who will may know the facts of being,—facts, be it said, which deny the actuality of death in matter, no less than the antecedent hypothesis of life in matter. Both phases of belief deal wholly with materialistic phenomena, with the round of speculations which never transcend the claims of matter, including the belief of life generated by matter and maintained by it. Hence the student of Christian Science is perfectly sure that these speculative hypotheses in no particular touch at any point the actual problem of Life, its source and continuity.

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