Looking at life from a mortal, material standpoint what a sad scene presents itself! The daily record of events presents the medley of life and death, day after day, in varied tales of crime, disaster, sorrow, suffering, as the panorama—the dream of the false sense of life—moves on. The seemingly helpless victims of every ill that flesh is heir to, bear the pangs of physical agony, whether it be pain, poverty, or mental woe, as a reality and burden from which there is no escape while living on earth. If they only knew, there is a way out of it all, and happy, indeed, are they who find it, the way of Life, the opposite of death.

If we think profoundly upon this subject we must see, from the standpoint of human reason, setting aside Revelation which teaches it most unequivocally, that the mental qualities, the character which is the reality of each individuality, is not dependent upon physical organization, and must survive it. Those who believe, or who profess to believe, that death ends all, are a very small minority. The hope of living on or of "living hereafter," is so universal as to be a very strong argument upon the side of the Scriptural teaching, that man is immortal.

The desire to live is born of God. Man clings to life tenaciously through all the degrees of suffering, and under the stress of adverse circumstances, shrinking instinctively from the thought of death. He feels his unity with Life, and especially in times of trouble turns for help to a Power beyond the visible. If it were not for this natural love of life, if it were really believed that death gives entrance to a heaven of health and happiness, this self-destroying error would have a much larger roll of human sacrifices as a legitimate result of the teaching that it is the will of God for man to suffer as long as he is in the body. Jesus overcame death as an enemy during his life-work, and in his own resurrection. He came to "destroy him that has the power of death, that is, the devil; and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage." The destruction of death and hell is the final work of the Conqueror, before the new heaven and earth can be fully manifested here.

The Old Testament prophets caught glimpses of this consummation most devoutly to be wished, the manifest supremacy of Spirit, Life, over all error. Isaiah declared the coming Conqueror would destroy everything that hides the supreme power of Spirit, "swallow up death in victory . . . and wipe away tears from off all faces." The divine Light and Life illuminating Hosea, he cried out, "I will redeem them from death; O death, I will be thy plagues; O grave, I will be thy destruction." The same glorious Truth was reiterated eight hundred years later: Christ, "must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death." "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?"

Divine Science, the Science of Life, comes now confirming and demonstrating all that was spoken "by the mouth of His holy prophets, which have been since the world began; that we should be saved from our enemies."

Jesus fulfilled this proclamation of Zechariah, boldly declaring, "He that liveth and believeth in me shall never die." Escape from death and all that leads to it is the result of believing and following Christ Jesus as the Way. How far, then, from Scriptural teaching is the thought that man's own belief of death gives him harmony or eternal life. "Because I live, ye shall live also," said Jesus. "At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you." If the world is to know this unity of God and man, it must be manifested here. Jesus said, "I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil"—sin, sickness, and death—through the understanding of eternal life. How glorious to know this, and to know that the false sense of life is but a dream, an illusion, and not life at all. Does not the very name—mortal life—expose its falsity. Is it not dead or dying life—life subject to death? mortal, the opposite of immortal? death, the opposite of life? The Science of Life makes all this very clear, drawing a perfectly. rational, logical line between the true and the false, between Life as God, and the false sense of life as an illusion of mortal sense ending in death.

The problem of Life has been clearly and logically stated in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker G. Eddy. Each individual on earth to-day will ultimately work out the problem sometime, somewhere. In working out the problem we must think of it rationally, with the same common sense used in reflecting upon any other subject. How many years does it take a child to advance with faithful study from the multiplication table on up through arithmetic until each process is mastered, to geometry? How many never get beyond the simplest processes? How many have never cared to get beyond them? Students of mathematical science have been willing to work hard enough, patiently and faithfully on and on, up through all the mental processes necessary to master the ever-advancing rules, that enable them to prove the principle in the higher and more difficult problems. In thus advancing, the problems in geometry and trigonometry, at an early stage of study incomprehensible, are as easily solved as the simplest sums in addition in the beginning.

As we look more deeply into Christian Science, we find it to be the very same Truth that the great Founder of Christianity lived and taught nineteen centuries ago. It is practical Christianity. Did not St. Paul say, "For me to live is Christ"? Christian Science is scientific because it can be demonstrated as purely spiritual. Our false views of material life must vanish into the nothingness of origin in mortal thought. Must not this true understanding of Good precede its perfect demonstration or proof in living it?

If the world but knew what it is, and what it can do for them in any and all the perplexities and sorrows of earth, how quickly the sinning, the suffering, and sorrowful would turn to it, and how eagerly would they accept this Science or true knowledge of Christ. There is not a pain or pang of mind or body that Christian Science, rightly understood, will not alleviate and ultimately destroy.

It can only be said of Christian Scientists that they have but started in this pathway, but great already have been their achievements with their little understanding of this Truth. What shall the harvest be when it is better understood and realized?—Dayton (O.) Herald.