Article April 8, 1950 Issue

NEWNESS OF LIFE

L. IVIMY GWALTER

Newness of life! The Bible promises it and the world longs for it! The picturesque figure of the old Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon, who thought to find the fountain of perpetual youth on the shores of the New World, is symbolic of humanity's endless search —a search which has not been satisfied because it has been wrongly directed. To material sense, discerning only its own ephemeral sense of substance, everything wears out and ends; life itself is fleeting and futile. But to spiritual sense, the God-endowed sense which apprehends reality, Spirit is substance and permanence, and Spirit is Life.

The promise of Christian Science that Life is forever at the standpoint of fullness and perfection is no Utopian dream but the revelation of a stupendous spiritual fact, a fact which is ever present and ever operative, a fact which not all the evidence before the material senses can gainsay or reverse. "Life is the everlasting I am , the Being who was and is and shall be, whom nothing can erase," writes Mary Baker Eddy on page 290 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures."

Because Life is God, the one I AM, it is self-existent, self-complete. It derives no sustenance from without, but holds within itself its own immeasurable resources of everything it needs; therefore it can never experience depletion or malnutrition in any form. There is nothing in Life that can fade away or be impoverished, that can lapse into imperfection or decay, that is fettered by pain or succumbs to death. Life is perpetual action, which knows neither stagnation nor stoppage, neither fluctuation nor excess. It is dependent upon no physical functioning, no process, for the maintenance of its purity and soundness, its harmony and health. The vital current of Life inheres in its own pulsating self-existence, and is rich, untainted, uncontaminated, and incorruptible, needing no replenishment by external, artificial means. The Psalmist perceived this, for he wrote, "With thee [God] is the fountain of life: in thy light shall we see light" (Ps. 36:9). Life has no opposite; it can no more wane or lapse into helplessness and lifelessness than God can cease to be God. Life in its every expression is complete and whole. It lacks not a single element of that which is essential to its completeness. Every expression of Life expresses the fullness of Life in vitality and vigor, in animation and exuberance.

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