Editorial January 3, 1931 Issue

Time

Clifford P. Smith

Time is the human concept which ascribes duration and limits to human acts and experiences. It may also give them coincidence and sequence. Like many other human concepts, time is useful, but it may be either beneficial or detrimental. It claims to limit achievement and joy no less than loss and suffering. Indeed, it claims to be the supreme law to which all that is human must submit. In absolute being, however, there is no time. Its claim to govern or limit man is fictitious; it has no sanction other than human belief; hence, it can be proved void.

In many instances Christ Jesus reduced time to a belief and disproved the validity of its requirements. Indeed, almost all his acts of power involved this proof. For one instance, some of his disciples started to row across the Sea of Galilee, but the water became rough because of a great wind. When they had got only a short distance, he went to them, walking on the water. "Then they willingly received him into the ship: and immediately the ship was at the land whither they went." This quotation is from John 6:21, according to the common version. Literally, the Greek text allows a stronger translation. "Then as soon as they consented to take him into the boat, the boat was at the shore they had been trying to reach" (Goodspeed's translation). Moffatt's translation contains the word "instantly." This incident, it is to be observed, could be regarded as an overcoming of space as well as time.

In different ways, other persons have furnished convincing proofs that time-law or time-limit is only a conventional belief. Mrs. Eddy did this by beginning and finishing her wonderful work as the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science after she had passed the point in human life beyond which time is not likely to permit even the beginning of such an important work; also by accomplishing in a few decades results for which time, the customary arbiter, would ordinarily require an extremely long and weary period of waiting. Further, in the practice of Christian Science Mrs. Eddy proved by quick and instantaneous healings the truth of her teaching that "one moment of divine consciousness, or the spiritual understanding of Life and Love, is a foretaste of eternity. ... Time is a mortal thought, the divisor of which is the solar year. Eternity is God's measurement of Soul-filled years" (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, pp. 598, 599). In so far as time enters into the practice of Christian Science, healing becomes convalescence or postponed recovery. Therefore, time is an error to be handled in this practice. There is no need to wait for being to be; it is now. See Science and Health 595:17; "Unity of Good" 11:3.

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