If an individual puts to himself the question: Am I mortal or immortal? he puts to himself the fundamental question to which Christian Science at all times and in all circumstances permits but a single answer, and that the right one. Man is immortal here and now. The God who is infinite is not just a superhuman God expressed without limit somewhere. The divine Mind's infinity compels the absolute corollary of the one infinite manifestation. One infinite Mind means one infinite creation, one infinite man, one infinitely right idea as the always present reality. Without limits of time or space, without an element of destructibility or decay, the very reverse of mortal is the one infinite God or Mind and His idea, man and the entire universe.

Mind and its idea being the one infinite reality, where is there anything or an occasion to say of mortality that it is? In all the realm of the real, which must be infinite, can one find aught to identify as finite and mortal? Mind as infinite cause produces infinite effect exactly like its cause. This one can and must scientifically affirm, and quite as much in seeing that the fact leaves no mortality anywhere but proves it to be forever illusion and nothingness. In knowing that mortality is not; that, like evil, it is never person, place, or thing; in relating identity to Mind, where all existence positively is, one is knowing the truth about mortality, which is always demonstrable and helpful because it is always the actual fact. Immortality is, mortality never is. This each one must realize for himself; as Mrs. Eddy says on page 195 of Science and Health, "The point for each one to decide is, whether it is mortal mind or immortal Mind that is causative. We should forsake the basis of matter for metaphysical Science and its divine Principle."

An individual, of course, is chained to matter, in belief, so long as he affirms either openly or covertly that mortality is anything or anywhere. Doing other than throwing one's entire weight of thought, speech, and action on the side of the immortal is attempting the fruitless and impossible task of making suppositional nothing into positive something. As Mrs. Eddy declares further in Science and Health (p. 192), "In Science, you can have no power opposed to God, and the physical senses must give up their false testimony. Your influence for good depends upon the weight you throw into the right scale. The good you do and embody gives you the only power obtainable." How can any man act in accord with the immortal God while admitting that the mortality of the physical senses is, and that he is a part of it? In place of every phase of the so-called mortal, Christian Science presents the immortal as really true.

A man can identify himself with God only because there is no other Principle to give man being. God, Mind or Principle, the one beginning point for all sure knowing and right classification, must, of course, be not merely accepted but consciously proved beyond the slightest doubt. The premise upon which one builds must be undeniable.

The fact that man is wholly immortal now, that the infinite Life is actually to be manifested here and now, awakens even the most lethargic and materially contented. One is a Christian Scientist and a student of Christian Science, of course, just so far as he turns his footsteps from pointing toward seeming matter and mortality to the infinite Principle of the present immortal living. Nothing short of working with what is true makes any footstep of to-day worth while, a footstep of Truth rather than another seeming step in mere illusion. The patience, the wisdom, the unbounded love for one's fellow man, by which one persists to the uttermost in replacing every sense of mythical mortality with the ever present and glorious fact in the divine Mind, even as Jesus did in his ministry for the whole world, comes from sticking fast, just as did he, to Mind and its immortal idea as the present and eternal reality. The "precept upon precept; line upon line" is built solely on this reality, which is all any man can stick to and build upon.

Mrs. Eddy's discovery of Christian Science was the discovery of the immortal world of Spirit as the world in which man is actually living, moving, and having his being. Having once seen this for herself, as every man must see it for himself, Mrs. Eddy continued to see the present immortality wholly, in place of whatever falsities of mortality, until to-day multitudes have caught this vision and are busily engaged in seeing the unlimited infinite as their present world, quite unfettered by the once seemingly formidable but now utterly baseless and impotent claims of sin, sickness, and death. Think of what Jesus found in Mind, and the glorious result, in place of the ten lepers, the five thousand hungry, Lazarus, the storm at sea, the man born blind, the three days in the tomb, and a host of experiences, terrifying to the human mind; he found all the while the immortal idea which was real to him because he was conscious of spiritual causation.

In opening a paragraph on "The present immortality" in Science and Health, page 428, Mrs. Eddy says, "The great spiritual fact must be brought out that man is, not shall be, perfect and immortal." And on page 242 of "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" she insists, "You can never demonstrate spirituality until you declare yourself to be immortal and understand that you are so. Christian Science is absolute; it is neither behind the point of perfection nor advancing towards it; it is at this point and must be practised therefrom. Unless you fully perceive that you are the child of God, hence perfect, you have no Principle to demonstrate and no rule for its demonstration." The giving way of any mortal supposition as one clings to immortal Truth is inevitable, for the fundamental fact of Christian Science is that there is no mortality.

The immortal idea of Mind or intelligence, which is every man's real selfhood, understands this now, and before this knowing, whether for the beginner or one long accustomed to turning to Mind, the immortal fact is found to be one's divine experience right now. The practical human footstep is the one taken from this sure basis, never animated by what is supposed to be even temporary human mind. The human mind animates nothing because the immortal idea of the one causative Mind is the infinite activity which is always man. Principle absolutely insists that the immortal step taken in the now is the whole step. Thus man, including the universe, is the immortal dweller in the secret place of the Most High.