Article June 14, 1947 Issue

"Life is real, and death is the illusion"

JOSEPH CARL MARKSTEIN

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.

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