Editorial January 21, 1939 Issue

True Preservation

George Shaw Cook

When David cried, "O Lord, thou preservest man and beast," he may have thought of preservation as meaning protection or defense. And it is comforting to mortals to think that God protects and defends those who trust Him. Throughout the ages, it has been proved that trust in divine power meant deliverance and protection to men in the hour of danger and in the face of the so-called destructive forces of matter and evil. In tempest and turmoil, in fire and earthquake, in famine and pestilence, those with abiding faith in God, infinite good, have found that He is indeed "a very present help in trouble." However, Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, lifts the meaning of preservation to a higher level of thinking when she says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 550), "God is the Life, or intelligence, which forms and preserves the individuality and identity of animals as well as of men."

Preservation may, in its highest sense, be regarded as the equivalent of perpetuation. And what is it that God, divine Mind, creates and perpetuates? Certainly not matter, for matter is the opposite of Mind, Spirit, and has no place in the spiritual universe of Mind's ideas. What is it, then, that Mind preserves? Surely not a mortal, finite sense of existence, for that is no part of the one and only Life, which is immortal and divine. Mrs. Eddy answers these questions definitely and concisely on page 280 of Science and Health, where she says, "God, the Soul of man and of all existence, being perpetual in His own individuality,harmony, and immortality, imparts and perpetuates these qualities in man,—through Mind, not matter."

The true spiritual individuality or identity of man, and of all lesser ideas, is that which God, creative Principle, preserves or perpetuates. One meaning of "preserve" is "to keep in existence or intact," and God's law is the law of immortal existence to all that He creates. His creation, the creation of divine Mind or Spirit, is, therefore, preserved or held intact forever. There is no destructive element or disintegrating agency in the spiritual universe, which is the only real universe. On the contrary, everything in that universe, including individual man, expresses the immortal, changeless nature of divine being. The idea or expression of Truth is immutable and eternal, like its Principle.

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