Article April 12, 1941 Issue

Resurrection

John Gerard Lord

GREAT as has been the change in popular thought regarding resurrection and a future life since the coming of Christian Science, with many harsh and unlovely beliefs giving place to more hopeful concepts, nevertheless to many the question of resurrection is still something rather problematical, something more to be hoped for than to be certain about; and consequently the thought of death and the hereafter still holds much of terror and uncertainty. Even many who fully believe in resurrection consider that this cannot take place until after submission to death, and in some dim and distant future wholly unpredictable. This was evident in the thought of Martha when, in replying to the Master's assertion concerning Lazarus, "Thy brother shall rise again," she said, "I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day." But Christ Jesus' response to Martha did not include any reference to resurrection as a future experience, or any intimation that death is a necessary prelude to eternal life. He stated, simply and directly, "I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me. though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die."

Students of Christian Science are profoundly grateful for the glorious light which this Science throws upon the Scriptures, particularly in regard to the words and works of Christ Jesus, and they rejoice because they have not merely a questioning hope, but a joyous conviction and certainty, of resurrection and eternal life. When the Master declared, "I am the resurrection, and the life," he was referring to his spiritual selfhood, or the Christ, and it is through the understanding of the Christ. Truth, that mankind may—nay, must—eventually attain to the resurrection. But what does resurrection mean? From what are we to be resurrected? In defining this word our revered Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 593), "Spiritualization of thought; a new and higher idea of immortality, or spiritual existence; material belief yielding to spiritual understanding."

Surely, then, it is from a false sense of life in matter, or the flesh, that we are to be resurrected, and this false sense is all that can die or disappear. Man does not, cannot die, for man is immortal, the complete expression of God, eternal Life, unfettered and untouched by matter or material conditions. The process of resurrection is not, then, a sudden experience, by way of death, through which one may find oneself instantaneously propelled, as it were, out of the darkness of materiality, doubt, and fear, sin, sickness, and death, into a sunlit haven of peace, harmony, and bliss. Because death itself is but a false belief, a lie concerning God, Life, and man in His image and likeness it can never aid in any way our demonstration of resurrection and immortality, for it cannot possibly help us in gaining the spiritualization of thought and consciousness which, as we have seen, is the resurrection.

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