When declining an invitation to attend the dedication of First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Chicago, our Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, wrote in part (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 177), "I am quite able to take the trip to your city, and if wisdom lengthens my sum of years to fourscore (already imputed to me), I shall then be even younger and nearer the eternal meridian than now, for the true knowledge and proof of life is in putting off the limitations and putting on the possibilities and permanence of Life."

Christian Science reveals that God, Life, is the only cause and creator, and accepts the premise in the first chapter of Genesis, which is the true record of creation. In this chapter there is no mention of age, of infirmity, or of lapse from perfection, for "God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good" (Gen. 1:31). Furthermore, the Bible states (Gen. 1: 26, 27): "And God [Spirit] said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. ... So God created man in his own image." Man then is spiritual, immortal, perfect as the Father, forever at "the eternal meridian," for there can be no higher status for man than that of spiritual reflection.

The mistakes of the human race are due to ignorance of Life. Mrs. Eddy points this out when she writes in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 397): "By not perceiving vital metaphysical points, not seeing how mortal mind affects the body,—acting beneficially or injuriously on the health, as well as on the morals and the happiness of mortals,—we are misled in our conclusions and methods. We throw the mental influence on the wrong side, thereby actually injuring those whom we mean to bless."

The Apostle James shows us how to throw the mental influence on the right side, the side of Spirit, when he admonishes us (James 4: 7, 8), "Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you." This is a command to resist the false suggestion that man is mortal, perishable, organic, changeable, subject to chemical action, waning ability, decrepitude, and decay. The advancing years are so generally believed to be accompanied by physical discords that we must indeed "draw nigh to God" in order to increase our understanding of man as a pure, immortal, spiritual idea. Man's at-one-ment with Life settles the question of his immortality and proves material theories to be baseless and lawless.

We approach "the eternal meridian" in the degree that we accept and demonstrate the facts of spiritual creation, spiritualizing our consciousness, whereby man's eternal intactness and fadeless being are made apparent.

Seeing, hearing, perception, memory, buoyancy, flexibility, strength, vigor—these qualities of the real man are permanent and indestructible, for they exist in Life. Man is the very expression and reflection of imperishable being. In the degree that we recognize this fact we drop the fear of old age as well as the mortal mind concepts of physical and mental infirmity called senility.

The writer knows a Christian Science practitioner of very mature years who maintains an active practice. She appears young and vigorous, and her thought is active and flexible. She does not celebrate birthdays or watch the passage of years, but is so occupied in helping others that there is no time to live in the past. This proves that our thinking is made manifest on the body, and that right thinking promotes health and harmony.

Perhaps no one in our time has exemplified so well the possibilities revealed by the perception of true being as did the revelator of Christian Science. Her work in establishing this great movement was accomplished when most individuals feel that their lifework is over and there is a need for rest. Each succeeding step that Mrs. Eddy took manifested her alertness, vigor, and wisdom, so proving that limitations of every kind were being put off and that the qualities of spiritual being are permanent and have nothing to do with age or material conditions.

The following, which appeared in the Cosmopolitan magazine of November, 1907, and is reprinted on page 273 of Miscellany, shows that the world recognized that Mrs. Eddy was able to practice the truths she taught: "Certainly, Christian Scientists, enthusiastic in their belief, are fortunate in being able to point to a Leader far beyond the allotted years of man, emerging triumphantly from all attacks upon her, and guiding with remarkable skill, determination, and energy a very great organization that covers practically the civilized world."

Our Leader makes clear the possibilities of our demonstrating fetterless Life when she writes (Christian Science Series, Vol. 1, No. 1): "In proportion as the law of Truth is understood and accepted, it obtains in the personality as well as character. The deformities and infirmities said to be the inevitable results of age, under the opposite mental impressions, disappear. You change the physical manifestations in proportion to your changed thoughts of the effect of accumulative years; expecting an increase of usefulness and vigor from advanced years with as much faith as you look for decrepitude and ugliness, a favorable result would be sure to follow. The added wisdom of age and experience is strength, not weakness, and we should understand this, expect it, and know that it is so, then it would appear." Untold possibilities are unfolded through the daily study and application of Christian Science, in which we learn more of God and His universe.

In Proverbs (4:10) we read, "Hear, O my son, and receive my sayings; and the years of thy life shall be many." A Christian Science Wartime Minister of mature years was very active in the recent world conflict. He stated that there were never more mismated words than "growing old." In a magazine there appeared a review of a book by a doctor in which he says that the average age of people in the United States has increased fifteen per cent since 1900 and that there are now tens of thousands of individuals "who live to be over 100 without half trying." In it he also states that one's best hope of living long is in his mental attitude toward death.

Longevity has increased since the advent of Christian Science. Our goal, however, is not to attain greater length of days, or to compete with Methuselah, but to relinquish a material and finite sense of existence and attain the understanding and demonstration of life as spiritual and immortal in the way Jesus taught.

Realizing and proving in ever-increasing measure that beauty, vigor, holiness, yea, all the faculties of Spirit, are indestructible and permanently reflected in man, we shall not fear advancing years. Rather shall we be grateful for the great truths of Life which Christian Science reveals and rejoice that Science enables us to give daily proofs of man's undiminishing beauty, freshness, vigor, and vitality.

These words of a hymn point to our possibilities of perceiving the ever-present realities of Life: