Editorial November 28, 1931 Issue

Now and Here

Clifford P. Smith

Christian Science teaching is the spiritual truth of being contrasted with material or mortal belief. Christian Science practice is the demonstration or use of this truth in human life. The entire experience of Christian Scientists has indicated and proved that every spiritual idea is effective and useful in human life, and is therefore valuable to all humanity. The acceptance and application of spiritual truths always gives to instructed persons a degree of advancement in good, a degree of immunity from evil. Even an idea which may appear to be abstract or abstruse is sure to have its practical benefits and uses.

Consider, for instance, the idea that individual being is eternal. For any person, the complete assimilation and demonstration of this truth would result in what Jesus repeatedly spoke of as "eternal life"; the full import of which exceeds human desire or vision. Then, too, the idea that all the countless forms and modes of absolute being are eternal must have innumerable benefits and uses in human life. This conclusion follows from Mrs. Eddy's definition of "time" in part as "mortal measurements; limits, in which are summed up all human acts, thoughts, beliefs, opinions, knowledge" (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 595). The better part of time is orderly sequence; but true order belongs to eternity.

Another instance of great importance to all mankind is furnished by the idea that the illimitable possibilities of eternal being are available to every man now. The one adversary (error, evil, material sense) continually argues against our having the full enjoyment and use of to-day. It argues that deductions must be made for acts and omissions, faults and failures, in the past; also that the most of what we desire to be or do can be achieved only in the future. Jesus denied all limitations for the past or the future when he said, "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof" (Matt. 6:34). Mrs. Eddy has expressed this thought even more emphatically: "We own no past, no future, we possess only now" (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 12).