Editorial February 10, 1945 Issue

Perpetuance of Life

Margaret Morrison

The attempt to perpetuate life in matter occupies most of the time and attention of mankind. It seems to depend on so many things: the food one eats (not forgetting mortal mind's latest fad, "your vitamins"); the liquids one drinks; the air one breathes; the clothes one wears; the exercise one takes. All these devices focus thought on the physical body and its so-called chemical action, as though life were a chemical process and man the effect of that process.

Jesus the Christ, the great exponent and demonstrator of eternal Life, continually turned thought away from the idolatrous belief of life in what is called matter to the one Life, which is Spirit, or God. In many concise statements he made clear the fact that as there is only one God, there is only one Life. In the twenty-third chapter of Matthew he is recorded as saying (v. 9), "And call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in heaven." And in the seventeenth chapter of St. John's Gospel we find that familiar statement (v. 3): "This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent." Through many other simple, vital statements did Jesus seek to make clear to men the source of Life as Spirit and the consequent futility of trying to perpetuate life in matter, apart from Spirit, the folly of trying to preserve a mistaken sense of life by the very thing that causes its dissolution. An error cannot be corrected by further error. The belief of life in matter cannot preserve itself, because it includes within itself the belief of death in matter.

Now the demonstrable truth is that man is not a chemical process, nor a mentality separated from God, the divine Mind. He is, on the contrary, the perfect expression of that perfect Mind. Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, on page 280 of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," says: "Rightly understood, instead of possessing a sentient material form, man has a sensationless body; and God, the Soul of man and of all existence, being perpetual in His own individuality, harmony, and immortality, imparts and perpetuates these qualities in man,—through Mind, not matter." How clear it is then that Mind perpetuates its own creation through its own immortal qualities and indestructible divine ideas. Perpetual, spiritual individuality is found in the expression of those ideas in their pure substance and joyous activity.

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