Editorial April 19, 1947 Issue

Time Illuminated

Margaret Morrison

In that spiritually inspired exegesis of the book of Genesis to be found in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mary Baker Eddy gives us many arresting and enlightening statements of truth. One of the most thought-provoking of these is to be found on page 502. There she says. "Spiritually followed, the book of Genesis is the history of the untrue image of God, named a sinful mortal." Speaking of this spiritual view of the untrue she says, "Even thus the crude forms of human thought take on higher symbols and significations, when scientifically Christian views of the universe appear, illuminating time with the glory of eternity."

"Illuminating time with the glory of eternity"—just what may this arresting phrase mean? And how may we find time illuminated with eternity and its glory? The sentence quoted gives its own answer to the latter question: Through "scientifically Christian views of the universe." A scientifically Christian view of the universe is a purely spiritual view in which time or matter has no place —that view which St. John had when he said. "There should be time no longer"—that universe which Christ Jesus proved to be intact when he instantaneously dispelled the material belief of sin and disease and revealed man as the harmonious expression of his divine source, Spirit or God.

"Time" is defined by Mrs. Eddy in Science and Health (p. 595) partly as "mortal measurements; limits, in which are summed up all human acts, thoughts, beliefs. opinions, knowledge." Time, then, illumined with the glory of eternity means life freed from the limitations of mortal belief and lifted into the eternal verities of true being and of inexhaustible good. There is no evil in eternity because eternity necessarily includes nothing destructive or destructible.

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