"THY YEARS SHALL HAVE NO END"
Years have been poetically but fearsomely described as great black oxen treading down and crushing all that is in their path. Through the centuries similar false concepts have haunted men and created a fear of time which seemingly fulfills itself in disease and disability. Yet accumulated time, in itself, is powerless to infect mankind with degenerative disorders; it is mankind's expectance and acceptance of such evils as real which seemingly bring them about. It is possible today, through the revelation of Christian Science, to correct such erroneous thinking by establishing the truth of man's spiritual nature and existence, and thus to maintain health, activity, and vigor despite passing years. Time cannot alarm or even affect one who increasingly understands Life as God, omnipotent, omnipresent Love.
This practical, demonstrable religion was discovered and founded by Mary Baker Eddy. She learned through consecrated, inspired study of the Bible that God's laws are as applicable today to meet the human need as they were throughout Biblical history. They are based on divine Principle and therefore are changeless and scientific. Both the patriarchs and the prophets, through their radical acceptance of God's omnipotence, attained a degree of longevity which would be considered incredible according to modern standards.
The great Master and Way-shower, Christ Jesus, attained the complete demonstration of deathless life in his resurrection and ascension through the understanding of his spiritual pre-existence as the beloved Son of God. He said (John 8:58 ), "Before Abraham was, I am." And the acknowledgment of his divine sonship in his statement (John 10:30 ), "I and my Father are one," carried with it the understanding of his ageless being as the reflection of that Life which is God, the acceptance of his eternal possession of every quality and condition of immortality. He knew that to accept the belief of mortal birth is to come under the seeming penalty of mortality, death. For mortality is death, and to repudiate its apparent reality or identity is to approach the demonstration of eternal life.
The leading error concerning man is the belief that he was born, that his existence became clarified and established through the physical channels of conception, development, and birth. How clearly, how definitely does Mrs. Eddy expose this falsity in the following passage from "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 550 ): "The continual contemplation of existence as material and corporeal—as beginning and ending, and with birth, decay, and dissolution as its component stages —hides the true and spiritual Life, and causes our standard to trail in the dust. If Life has any starting-point whatsoever, then the great I am is a myth. If Life is God, as the Scriptures imply, then Life is not embryonic, it is infinite." How important, then, that we lift our concept of existence from matter to Spirit, from corporeality to Soul, from belief to understanding. And how comforting it is to realize that no claim of mortal mind can interfere with the consecrated, humble desire to know Life as God.
False human thinking has constituted itself a framework of limitation within which capabilities, faculties, and accomplishments are imprisoned. But there can be no measurement for the manifestation of infinite Life; no limit set upon the expression of infinite Truth; no boundary for the reflection of infinite Mind.
The writer of the one hundred and second Psalm must have caught more than a glimpse of the divinity of Life, untrammeled by mortality, for he contrasts the unreal, transitory nature of mortality with the imperishable, unchanging glory of infinity, concluding with the triumphant cry, "But thou art the same, and thy years shall have no end." Similarly, there can be no end of life for man, because man, created by God in His exact likeness, is as infinite, as eternal, as his Maker. For him, life is not doled out through the grudging measure of time; it is the consummately natural expression of eternity, the unfolding glory of being.
Man, the idea of Spirit, is a spiritual phenomenon. His source is God. Therefore he never comes upon the darkness of disease, disability, death, but always upon the radiance of eternal harmony, health, holiness. He is an emanation of God, Life. Proportionately as this great fact unfolds and develops in human consciousness will the infirmities of mortality diminish until they disappear.
There is no paralysis, no stagnation, no inactivity in matter. Mortal mind alone contains and perpetuates these falsities, and outlines them upon its own subjective state, which it has named matter. To dissociate one's intelligence and existence from every phase of mortality is to gain freedom from mortal despotism and to experience the clarity of vision, the logic of Truth, the glory of being, which belong to every idea of Mind.
The study of Christian Science opens one's eyes to the recognition of Life as the sole authority of existence. Through this recognition one ceases to reach hopefully toward the future possibility of immortal life, and begins to rejoice in his present possession of immortality as the child of God. The real man, the man whom God creates, constitutes, and controls, is already free from every false concept of creation as material. He is an inhabitant of the realm of spiritual reality, continually expressing the nature of his heavenly Father in such qualities as joy, peace, health, wisdom, and so on.
Mrs. Eddy, herself an inspiring example of the health-bestowing, life-preserving power of divine Science, has this to say of human existence (Science and Health, p. 246 ): "Except for the error of measuring and limiting all that is good and beautiful, man would enjoy more than threescore years and ten and still maintain his vigor, freshness, and promise. Man, governed by immortal Mind, is always beautiful and grand. Each succeeding year unfolds wisdom, beauty, and holiness."
Let us cease then to measure and begin to enjoy immortality!
