Christ Jesus demonstrated on several occasions that death is an illusion, and he also demonstrated the reality, the eternality, and the harmony of Life. Before the Christian era the unreality of death and the reality of Life had been proved by Elisha when he raised the son of the Shunammite woman. Following the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, Peter raised Tabitha and Paul restored Eutychus. Yet despite these definite proofs, Christians have universally accepted the inevitability and to some extent the finality of death, instead of the reality of Life and its continuing manifestations of harmony and perfection.

This dynamic statement is found on page 428 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy: "Life is real, and death is the illusion. A demonstration of the facts of Soul in Jesus' way resolves the dark visions of material sense into harmony and immortality." Christian Scientists, guided by the words and works of their Way-shower and the teachings of the Founder of their religion, Mrs. Eddy, should utterly reject the illusion and accept the reality. This they can do only by "a demonstration of the facts of Soul in Jesus' way."

Did Jesus mean the overcoming of death to be an indefinite extension of the material sense of life in a matter body? Did he mean that the joys and sorrows, the pleasures and pains, of material so-called life should continue throughout time? Surely not, for all these, a material mind and a matter body calling themselves man, material pains and pleasures, and even time itself, are illusions, not realities. God and His spiritual man and universe are the only real, and the real man and universe reflect the Life which is God.

The Master, after his supreme proof of the power of God, Spirit, to overcome the belief of death, did not remain long on this human plane. Instead, he rose above matter to give the final proof of the eternality of divine Life, which knows no death, no sorrow or suffering. This was his way of demonstrating the facts of Soul in proving Life to be real and death but an illusion. We as earnest Christian Scientists must work as he worked; his way of overcoming must be our way. It is the way of Spirit, not matter; of eternity, not time; of reality, not illusion; and the goal is the eternal life that we should strive to attain.

Jesus' words as recorded in John (17:3) clearly define the reality of Life and how we should strive for its attainment. He said, "This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent." God is Life, Truth, and Love, the loving Father and Mother of man, and Christ is the divine idea through which the understanding of God comes to mankind. We should ever be truly grateful that Christian Science has given us the key to the way of knowing God and His Christ.

On page 598 of Science and Health Mrs. Eddy gives a remarkable pronouncement of the eternality of Life and the illusiveness of death when she writes: "One moment of divine consciousness, or the spiritual understanding of Life and Love, is a foretaste of eternity. This exalted view, obtained and retained when the Science of being is understood, would bridge over with life discerned spiritually the interval of death, and man would be in the full consciousness of his immortality and eternal harmony, where sin, sickness, and death are unknown."

It is life discerned spiritually, then, that bridges over the interval of death. To discern, understand, and demonstrate spiritual Life is to know God and His Christ and to unknow or cast off the belief that a corporeal mortal is man. It is to discern and prove that the man of God's creating reflects and possesses by reflection all that God is or has. It is to know and prove that all that is unlike God and His reflection is unreal, and that death, the claimed opposite of Life, is therefore but an illusion.

"If a man keep my saying," declared Jesus (John 8:51), "he shall never see death." Enoch and Elijah, through walking closely with God and communing with Him, proved the foreverness and reality of Life, and the illusory and evitable nature of death. Yet the Master himself allowed men to crucify him, to destroy what they called his life. Then, when his enemies thought that he and his teachings had been destroyed, he proved in his resurrection and ascension that "Life is real, and death is the illusion."

We should strive to hold in consciousness the reality of Life, not the illusion, strive for the positive and demonstrable understanding and realization of Life that is without beginning or ending, Life that is timeless and undying. This, Christian Science progressively enables us to do.

May those who have suffered the loss of loved ones, who have been deprived by the claimed power of death of the human companionship one rightly treasures, turn to Christian Science and find in its teachings the truth about God and man, and learn, what is real and what is illusion. May they learn to know that there is no power that can destroy the real man or one iota of the limitless good provided by a loving Father-Mother for all His children. Christian Science brings the discernment or realization that Life is not in matter to be destroyed, but is indestructible Spirit. Man lives and is because God is, and that immutable fact, which has to a great degree been proved in Christian Science, can never be changed. Fears and doubts are resolved as the light of this Science illumines the darkness of mortal belief. And in the light of spiritual understanding we see the eternality of man.

Let us thank Paul for identifying death as an enemy that can and is being destroyed, and our Leader for placing it in its proper category as an interval. Remember there is no permanence to that which is an interval, no reality to that which can be destroyed. Its only power is its claimed power to masquerade as finality and to cause mortal man and material life, so called, to disintegrate. Yet the crucifixion of Jesus brought no finality or disintegration to the Christ, Jesus' real selfhood. Nor can the seeming passing of a loved one bring to an end the real man, God's image, forever perfect and eternal.

Our beloved Leader gives this heartening and comforting message in Science and Health (p. 45): "Glory be to God, and peace to the struggling hearts! Christ hath rolled away the stone from the door of human hope and faith, and through the revelation and demonstration of life in God, hath elevated them to possible at-one-ment with the spiritual idea of man and his divine Principle, Love." The true selfhood of man can never be imprisoned by a tomb or covered with the sod. Death cannot bar the way of freedom or prevent the discernment of spiritual Life.

Death should never be regarded as a friend, but under all circumstances as an enemy which cannot frighten or overpower us. The understanding of God as Life and Love, that Life which is eternal, and that Love which encompasses its ideas with its tenderness and strength, destroys fear and enmity.

May we then progressively turn from the dark forebodings and fears of a false material sense of life; turn from the belief in a power apart from God engendered by false education and never sanctioned by divine Love and from the sorrow and suffering such beliefs entail. Then, looking to the glorious light of Christian Science, we shall prove that God is Life, divine Love, and man ever His beloved. May we look beyond the illusion to envision the real, spiritual man, God's likeness, in the spiritual universe of Mind, in the full consciousness of his true selfhood and heritage of eternal life, where Spirit reigns and "sin, sickness, and death are unknown."