The long-distance call had been a great shock. I put the receiver down and quietly reached for Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy. It held, I knew, the healing antidote for the news that my brother had suddenly died. These were the words I opened to: "Life is divine Principle, Mind, Soul, Spirit. Life is without beginning and without end. Eternity, not time, expresses the thought of Life, and time is no part of eternity." ^{Science and Health, p. 468;}

This spiritual reassurance continued in the firm declaration of a Christian Science practitioner whose prayerful support I asked for: "Don't concede for one moment that your brother was ever born into matter. What is true of him is actually true of God. His identity is eternal in God."

Of course! Man is not a mortal. The concept of a human personality so long familiar had to be replaced with the spiritual truth of man as never beginning or ending, the divine idea living in divine Principle, wholly permanent in God.

I could see that compassion, humor, keen insight, all God-inspired talents were still his, together with a continuing opportunity to express Mind's infinite diversity and individuality—always non-material, deathless, and timeless.

A feeling of personal loss was challenged with these questions: Have I lost my capacity to love my brother and all mankind? Has he been cut off from his association with Life and its innumerable ideas? Do I really understand that God is the only Life and man is Life's perpetual representative?

It became clearer that since God is infinite individuality, infinitely expressing itself forever, no one can fade out or cease to function as an original part of God's design; no one can drop out of the divine plan. Mrs. Eddy writes, "Erase the figures which express number, silence the tones of music, give to the worms the body called man, and yet the producing, governing, divine Principle lives on,—in the case of man as truly as in the case of numbers and of music,—despite the so-called laws of matter, which define man as mortal." ^{ibid., p. 81;}

I was healed of shock and sorrow that day. I found that what I had lost was a false sense of man. Instead, I gained the spiritual concept to be cherished and loved, an abiding affection for man's real identity. To rise above sorrow, to really love, I needed to "make holy garments" for my brother "for glory and for beauty." ^{Ex. 28:2;}

Personal grief indicates that one has mistakenly identified a loved one with the Adam myth rather than with the Christ, Truth. If we see man through a veil of mortal belief grown more opaque with the years, a strong spiritual effort is necessary to remove the obstruction. Sorrow means that a mistaken concept of man is claiming our allegiance.

We can realize that when material sense argues for a mortal victim, right then the spiritual expression of God, the veritable idea coexisting with Principle, Life, exists. Like an individual number, the individual identity lives on, an indispensable unit of the complete wholeness, or holiness, of Life, God.

In his farewell discourse to his disciples, Christ Jesus tenderly assured them of the eternality of the Christ: "And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever.... I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you." ^{John 14:16, 18;}

The Christ, the Comforter, can come in Christian Science in a moment of need, revealing man as the continuous emanation of God's attributes, including life. Let us quickly accept the comfort of the Comforter when sorrow would attempt to strike our joy and unsettle the fundamental foundation of our faith. In a crisis the recognition of man's true selfhood as God's likeness can appear as a bright rainbow after the storm.

In refusing to submit to grief we are really working out our own salvation, and we are also thereby helping to heal the claims of sorrow universally. We can rejoice that all the good that is true for us as the offspring of Life is also true for all, everywhere. Genuine brotherhood is discovered as we understand man to be spiritual and perfect.

Let us be faithful to our concept of God as Life without end, Love without limits, Soul without barriers, Spirit without matter. Truth continues. Man continues. The conscious awareness of man as the eternal reflection of perpetual Truth fills us with joy.

Scientifically correcting the belief of personal loss, we find there is only spiritual gain. There is no broken circle. God's family is a spiritual fact, never depleted, aways present, and this understanding is forever included in man's individuality. The true understanding of family as the universal manifestation of our Father-Mother God, expressed in the brotherhood of man, can only grow stronger and sweeter as we advance.

We can enjoy our sense of family wherever we are, for the spiritual idea is not dependent on human ties for its fulfillment in individual experience. True brotherhood is the mutual sharing of God's love for man.

Mrs. Eddy encountered many sorrows during her lifetime. The spiritual maturity she attained in meeting and overcoming them is shown in this passage: "This mortal seeming is temporal; it never merges into immortal being, but finally disappears, and immortal man, spiritual and eternal, is found to be the real man." ^{Science and Health, p. 190.}