Editorial July 13, 1946 Issue

The Immutability of Man

Paul Stark Seeley

A word not frequently heard in daily conversation, but one that greatly helps us to appreciate a vitally important quality of God and His man is "immutable." Dictionaries define it as "unchangeable." In her book "Miscellaneous Writings" Mary Baker Eddy writes (p. 79), "Immortal man is the eternal idea of Truth, that cannot lapse into a mortal belief or error concerning himself and his origin: he cannot get out of the focal distance of infinity." She continues, "If the great cause is perfect, its effect is perfect also; and cause and effect in Science are immutable and immortal."

Cause and effect are immutable. They are unchangeable in quality and character at any time or in any way. This is contradicted by the material senses, for mutability, or change, characterizes all that is material. Physical science discloses that everything material is in a state of continuous change, chemically or otherwise. As the philosopher, Heraclitus, observed, "There is nothing permanent except change." Sometimes it is rapid, sometimes slow, and sometimes very slow. But still there is change. The term "immutable" is inapplicable to the material creation or to mortal man.

From birth and before, a mortal is ever changing until the change called death. So with animal, tree, and flower. From beginning to end these are constantly in a process of change. For a time there is growth and upbuilding; then come decadence, depletion, and destruction. The human race plans its life on the basis of the generally accepted belief that existence is continuously subject to change. This material view believes one may be healthy one hour, sick the next, alive today, gone tomorrow. It avers that mortals may have normal sight and hearing for a time; then may come a change. A mortal may succeed, then fail, be happy and wholesome, then unhappy and sin-enslaved. One's safety is believed subject to accident, his business to cycles of change and depression.

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