Article August 9, 1924 Issue

Immortality versus Mortality

REAY C. VAN DER VOORT

MAN , as God's idea, coexists with God, reflecting dominion and harmony, having neither birth nor death. Spiritual man is not mortal, but immortal. This may be illustrated as follows. When a little child goes to school and learns that two and two make four, this knowledge becomes part of his consciousness. The fact that two and two make four never had a beginning, nor will it ever have an end; and as the child awakens to this truth through correct education, it may be properly said, referring to his thought which has been enlightened, that it has neither beginning nor end. The Master said, "And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent." God always has been and always will be perfect, without beginning or end. God is eternal and unchangeable Truth. In proportion as we know God, through the education of our thought Spiritward, shall we be able to understand that man never had a beginning and will never have an end.

The so-called carnal mind argues against the truth; for "the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be," as Paul says. In its argument, this suppositional, carnal mind but proclaims its own false nature; for God is Life and God is All; therefore Life is All, and there is no death. Yes, comes another argument, that part of my consciousness which always has been and always will be true can never become extinct, but what about that part which to all appearances had a beginning? In the first place, if we admit that we exist, then we must admit that we are of Truth, and inseparable from Truth. That which seems to have had birth and to possess life apart from God is what Paul calls "the old man," which must be "put off." It is what Mrs. Eddy names "mortal man" and designates as the counterfeit of the real man. Hear what she says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 538): "As both mortal man and sin have a beginning, they must consequently have an end, while the sinless, real man is eternal."

Man, as understood in Christian Science, is the idea or expression of God, divine Mind; hence, the eternal fact about man is that he has conscious spiritual identity. To the extent mortals think correctly, to that extent is the belief of mortality replaced by immortality and so-called death swallowed up in victory. As men think, so are they. As Truth is grasped, man's permanent identity becomes understood. Truth once grasped is never lost. At one time, when the writer was a young student of Science, oppressed by a false sense of suffering, he was tempted to believe that to live forever offered no joy to him; for would not eternal life include the eternal consciousness of suffering? He had not yet learned and demonstrated that evil and suffering are unreal, and therefore unnecessary in God's perfect plan for His children. Later, God became to him the all-pervading presence of divine good, displacing the images of error in his thought, together with the fear of suffering. He learned that true existence is the knowing of God, of Life, Truth, Love, from which knowing must forever be excluded the consciousness of evil. He also learned that the only true consciousness is that of harmony, holiness, and health. As our Leader, Mrs. Eddy, says in Science and Health (p. 276): "Man and his Maker are correlated in divine Science, and real consciousness is cognizant only of the things of God."

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