Editorial June 12, 1948 Issue

FORSAKING TIME FOR ETERNITY

John Randall Dunn

It has been the custom of some religionists to ask such questions as this: "Where do you expect to spend eternity?" Apparently it is the thought of the sponsors of this query that eternity begins with the cessation of human life on this sphere; in fact, one dictionary defines eternity as the condition beginning at death. How one's thought on this subject changes when he learns in Christian Science to speak the new tongue of spiritual sense! In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mary Baker Eddy writes (pp. 468,469): "Life is without beginning and without end. Eternity, not time, expresses the thought of Life, and time is no part of eternity. One ceases in proportion as the other is recognized. Time is finite; eternity is forever infinite."

We can begin to spend eternity, therefore, when we gain the understanding that God is Life—Life without beginning or end—and that man is the eternal expression of this infinite Life. In fact, eternity appears with the disappearance of the mortal sense of time, its finity and limitations. What a prospect is this—that one can claim eternity today! Does not the Master make this plain when he declares that knowing God and His Christ "is life eternal"? Our task, therefore, is to strive to be "delivered from the galling yoke of time," to use Wordsworth's expression.

In Science and Health our inspired Leader has given, without doubt, the most thought-provoking definition of time the world has ever known. In all its unloveliness, a "galling yoke" indeed, she describes time thus (p. 595): "Mortal measurements; limits, in which are summed up all human acts, thoughts, beliefs, opinions, knowledge; matter; error; that which begins before, and continues after, what is termed death, until the mortal disappears and spiritual perfection appears." Here is a point worthly of special note: God does not appear in this definition. He is not responsible for mortal measurements and limits. The infinite God, who is Life itself, never told His image, man, that with the multiplication of years strength would be impaired, faculties limited, and usefulness destroyed. Divine Life is not seen in matter, or error. In fact, if existence becomes the vassal of the material misconception called time, it is very far from real Life.

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THE WILL OF GOD
June 12, 1948
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