Article February 23, 1957 Issue

"THE GOD OF THE LIVING"

NELL AMNA SHELTON

Christ Jesus recognized that the endurance, or immortality, of man's individuality is important to each of us, and he emphasized this point when he said (Mark 12: 26, 27): "As touching the dead, that they rise: have ye not read in the book of Moses, how in the bush God spake unto him, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living." Although these men had lived many years before Jesus made this statement, he knew that the individuality of each of them was alive in accordance with God's plan of eternal life for each of His individual ideas. A study of the spiritual definitions of Abraham and Jacob in the Glossary of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy throws light on the eternal spiritual identity of these God-fearing worthies and affords a glimpse of the immortality and the individuality of each of us.

Mrs. Eddy stresses the endurance of man's individuality. Writing in Science and Health of the mind which Christ Jesus termed a liar, she says (p. 292): "This carnal material mentality, misnamed mind, is mortal. Therefore man would be annihilated, were it not for the spiritual real man's indissoluble connection with his God, which Jesus brought to light." This connection, or oneness, with God is demonstrated by each individual as he gains an understanding of man's spiritual nature as God's own image and likeness. When this realization takes place and the spiritual fact of man's true spiritual identity is understood, we see that God's nature is ever expressed through man.

We are assured by both the Bible and Science and Health that man's spiritual identity is never submerged or absorbed, but lives on throughout eternity. Grief occasioned by the passing on of a friend was healed in my own experience when I realized that God is "the God of the living" and knew that my friend continues to live and work because her true individuality is immortal.

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