Editorial August 17, 1946 Issue

Man At One with Eternity

Margaret Morrison

Man is not found in matter or the things of matter. Man is found only in Spirit, as the expression of Spirit in its perfect and harmonious activity. The things of time and mortality never identify man. On page 402 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mary Baker Eddy writes, "Man is indestructible and eternal." We identify man, then, only with that which is indestructible and eternal, substantial and ever living—with divine Mind. Now the qualities of Mind, the very substance of Life and Love, never get out of Spirit into matter, out of Mind into a physical body, out of eternity into time. So man is never found in nonintelligence — the limitations, restrictions, pains, and pleasures—of a physical, mortal body, but in the free, eternal, active ideas of Spirit. Man lives in eternity, not in time.

Spiritual understanding, not death, is the steppingstone to eternity and to a realization of one's true identity as man. Only that which is good is eternal, because evil fulfills its own law of destruction. It follows that there is no evil in eternity, no disease, no pain, no poverty, no sorrow, and, since man is eternal, not one of these evils is found in man.

Let us then be ever watchful to deny identity to that which is mortal. True individual identity is as eternal as Life itself. On page 301 of Science and Health Mrs. Eddy speaks of mortal man's false concept of himself as substantial, and follows with this statement: "On the other hand, the immortal, spiritual man is really substantial, and reflects the eternal substance, or Spirit, which mortals hope for. He reflects the divine, which constitutes the only real and eternal entity." What fulfillment of hope is here! One needs only to turn from the transient, personal sense of life to the spiritual and find himself experiencing the eternal goodness of God. He turns from an insubstantial, precarious, personal sense of living, fleeting and mortal, to the substantial spiritual life, love, intelligence, and activity that constitute eternity, with which he is one. He finds himself no longer a slave to time, a victim of mortality, but a child of eternity, the inheritor of immortality.

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