Article October 14, 1939 Issue

The Unreality of Old Age

HELEN M. DRYSDALE

Some few years ago, a Christian Science practitioner pointed out to a young student the need for alertness with regard to the false belief of old age, with all its unhappy accompaniments, and how necessary it is for us to protect ourselves from this belief. The student was very grateful for this wise counsel, and pondered the matter a great deal. She saw how insidious the false law of old age is, and how it may cause sincere workers in Christian Science to manifest weakness and decrepitude, if they have not been sufficiently awake to the truth.

Christian Science teaches us that evil in all its forms is unreal, because God did not make it. In the first chapter of Genesis we read, "And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good." And "old age" certainly is not "very good." One cannot think of God as other than absolutely perfect. How then can man, who, as we learn in Christian Science, is the reflection of God, be less than perfect? How can the real man possibly become old, decrepit, weak, or inharmonious in any way?

Mortal man appears to pass from youth to middle age, and finally to old age and infirmity; but this is true only of the counterfeit, not of the real man—the man whom God creates. If we would be free of the belief of old age, therefore, we must look away from the false concept to spiritual man, the image and likeness of God. The real man always has existed and always will exist as God's reflection. As we hold to this true concept of man, and refuse to accept the false pictures that mortal mind brings to our notice, we shall know harmony instead of discord, strength instead of frailty, freshness and alertness instead of mental apathy. Mrs. Eddy writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 244), "Man in Science is neither young nor old." How grateful we should be that through the understanding of the truth which Christian Science has revealed, we may prove that the belief of old age can have no power over us, because it is unreal, untrue—a lie about man!

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Divine Direction
October 14, 1939
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