Article November 1, 2013

Life

O. D.

Originally published in the November 1, 1890 issue of the Christian Science Series (Vol. 2, No. 13)

“The gift of God is eternal Life." Then Life not given by God is temporal or time life. Christ never recognized any other life but the God-life. —"Ye will not come unto me that ye may have Life," he said to the moving, breathing multitude that came to see and hear the miracle worker. He realized that the Life that begun and ended was not Life, but death. “The day thou eatest thereof thou shalt die," was the doom of the knowledge of any Life but the God-given. "No man taketh my life from me." He who expressed life,—the divine Idea of Life could not be separated from itself. It could take upon itself the likeness of flesh—to show man his dominion over the lie of death, but itself was the gift of God—"Eternal life."

Life is so much more than just the opposite of death. We cannot think of it separate from motion; but the life that Jesus laid down and took up was only to the finite senses to whom it seems to exist in matter. The mighty Life, the Infinite Life, the power and strength that eternal Life expresses in spiritual man we catch glimpses of when "we stand by the bed of death where all material remedies have failed and catch the trumpet word of Truth. There is no death!" S. & H. The waters of the River of Life, of which if a man drink he shall not thirst, is, "to know God, whom to know aright is Life everlasting." Man never was—never can be separated from Life, any more than power, or strength, can become weakness. This understanding of man's majesty by the Scientist will heal by the courage it gives. When it first dawned upon me, the effect upon the patient held in thought, was a raising from death, and it has never lost its brightness, but gains in power as longer glimpses of its Truth are revealed.

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