Editorial January 3, 1942 Issue

"Immortality's goal"

Evelyn F. Heywood

The consciousness of his immortality was inherent in the utterances of Christ Jesus. "If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death," he said to his followers, thus making the understanding of immortality contingent upon obedience.

Denying all human parenthood, knowing himself to have dwelt forever in eternal Mind, he sought in word and action to bring home to the people the fact that death comes not because something has happened to life, but because of ignorance and disobedience. On page 58 of "Unity of Good," Mary Baker Eddy writes, "The Master's sublime triumph over all mortal mentality was immortality's goal."

Because this faith in the sayings of Christ Jesus was primarily vested by the disciples not in their understanding and therefore correlative keeping of them, but in him, their Master—as is the way of all unenlightened human discipleship —the followers of Jesus fell away from his teachings after the crucifixion. They had accepted his immortality as expressed in his words and in his seemingly miraculous deeds, healing sickness, overcoming sin, even raising the dead. But when the test came to prove the truth of what he had taught them—to refuse to accept the boast of evil to destroy life—they saw in his crucifixion and burial only loss and defeat. They saw the negation of their hopes, the collapse of their careers, the denial of their faith. Forgotten was the assurance of their Master. In accepting what they believed was his death, they saw the death also of all their promised expectations. In referring to the words of Jesus, "If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death," Mrs. Eddy writes (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, pp. 429, 430), "That statement is not confined to spiritual life, but includes all the phenomena of existence."

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