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."

The goal of immortality is not won by merely knowing that there is no cessation of life, but by overcoming every phase of mortality which presents itself as confirmation that men are at the mercy of frailty, disease, dissolution, and sin. Daily, hourly, men are confronted with arguments which not only deny that life is spiritual, but that everywhere they turn there is frustration, failure, dissolution. Nevertheless, for him who discerns life spiritually, how sovereign and explicit is the decree of immortal evidence! With what insistence and clarity is there set forth what each must do in maintaining the consciousness of his own immortality!

Had the disciples kept the Master's saying, resurrection would have come to them also. As the result of their spiritual understanding of immortality they would have known their Master to be deathless. Their trust in Truth would not have been obliterated, and the shadows of faithlessness and despair would not have fallen across their days. They would not have had to wait until human proof was provided for them, on the shores of Galilee, that it was not death but life which had triumphed at Calvary.

"The truth of life, or life in truth, is a scientific knowledge that is portentous; and is won only by the spiritual understanding of Life as God, good, ever-present good, and therefore life eternal," writes our Leader on page 273 of "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany." To keep and therefore to live the teachings of the Christ, calls for spiritual knowing. Nothing less is eternal Life. Not academically, not objectively, not as something which is afar off, fraught with contradictions and irrelevancies, but consistently in every least phenomenon of human experience must the claims of mortality be replaced by the vision which unites the individual with immortal consciousness. We know that throughout his career where disease and lack, sin and danger, presented themselves, Jesus saw health and abundance, righteousness and safety, and so men were restored and delivered. Today each one is called upon to ask himself whether he is having part in the resurrection, or whether he is accepting the evidence of the material senses, turning away from the assurance of present immortality. Is he distraught by the horrors, the cruelties, the injustices of a world at war, forgetting to hold forever in view the "sublime triumph over all mortal mentality" of Christ Jesus? This is the task that our Leader set herself at all times, and she never allowed weariness or discouragement to rob her of her goal.

He who at these times depends upon human evidence for his faith in good's survival, may, disillusioned and embittered, turn back temporarily to some mortal means of mere existence and support, even as did the disciples. But he who refuses to lose sight of ever-present Life, of all-embracing Love, knows that it is the annihilation of evil, the triumph of good, which is taking place. Though faced with temptation, menaced with danger, surrounded by enmity, he thus proves, in obedience and trust, that not hatred and tyranny, but Love and Life are the victors; that in the scientific spiritual knowing of God and man he is taking the ascending path which leads to "immortality's goal."

Evelyn F. Heywood

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