Article October 14, 1944 Issue

The Glorious Now

ALICE F. FUNKEN

When Peter wrote in his second epistle, "One day is with the Lord as a thousand years," he indicated that he had caught a glimpse of God's limitless eternity, an eternity that knows no past or future, but only a glorious present, or now. So, too, every alert Christian Scientist is engaged in proving for himself that as a child of God he lives and moves in the eternal now, and that now he is perfect, satisfied, harmonious, and free.

Some of the things which Mary Baker Eddy wrote about time and eternity seemed revolutionary when they first appeared in print. Take, for example, the statement from the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 468): "Eternity, not time, expresses the thought of Life, and time is no part of eternity. One ceases in proportion as the other is recognized. Time is finite; eternity is forever infinite;" and this one from "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" (p. 12): "We own no past, no future, we possess only now." Very different was this teaching from the general thought at that time about passing hours and unalterable dates.

Yet when Mrs. Eddy's readers once begin to reason on the subject, how easy it is to see that the only thing that would testify to a past or a future is mortal mind, whose very existence is finite and characterized by a belief in dates and time measurements. When this false sense of mind is overcome, all the limiting claims of incompleteness leave also, and men are free to enjoy the perpetual unfoldment, progress, and rightful activity belonging to man in God's likeness.

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