Under the marginal heading "The present immortality" Mary Baker Eddy writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." the textbook of Christian Science (p. 428); "The great spiritual fact must be brought out that man is, not shall be, perfect and immortal. We must hold forever the consciousness of existence, and sooner or later, through Christ and Christian Science, we must master sin and death." She adds these encouraging words: "The evidence of man's immortality will become more apparent, as material beliefs are given up and the immortal facts of being are admitted."

Christ Jesus' life mission was to bring out this spiritual fact, man's present immortality. Unmoved alike by persecution or by false accusation, the Saviour of mankind pursued his God-inspired mission, uttering dynamic truths accompanied by impressive healing, exemplifying in word and deed the nature and indestructibility of spiritual life.

To those Jews whose antagonism had been aroused by the speedy healing of the sufferer who had lain helpless for many years beside the pool of Bethesda. he made the trenchant observation (John 5:26), "As the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself." His mission and purpose were to reveal and demonstrate the relationship of God and man, Father and Son; to show to humanity the transitional steps to be taken from mortal consciousness to divine understanding; to awaken spiritual perception to the absolute truths of being.

In the regeneration of human thinking much patient work is necessary to bring into subjection the often unsuspected and even mysterious latent elements of error by which mankind seems beset. Only thus does thought become attuned and obedient to divine inspiration and guidance; only thus do human concepts yield to spiritual understanding. In this manner the pattern of life as exemplified by Christ Jesus will take shape in individual life, and the dominion bestowed upon the ideal man of God's creation in the first chapter of Genesis will appear.

The fundamental truth conveyed by Jesus' statement that the Son has life in God Himself is the dominion given by Mind to its idea. Our Leader asserts in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 189), "For man to know Life as it is, namely God, the eternal good, gives him not merely a sense of existence, but an accompanying consciousness of spiritual power that subordinates matter and destroys sin, disease, and death."

As individual thought dwells with and meditates upon the immortal facts of Life—its perfection, oneness, indestructibility, and infinity —false corporeal beliefs will give place to the consciousness of spiritual dominion and an awareness of reality. To this ever-advancing consciousness the belief in the incident of death and the fear it engenders must steadily lessen until these hold no place in thought and man's immortal status is recognized as a present reality.

To make way for the immortal realities of Life, thought must become less and less conscious of matter as substance and increasingly conscious of the immortal substantiality of divine Mind. Jesus' consciousness did not stoop to the belief of life in the flesh. He did not accept the false appearances of mortal existence, as witnessed by his constant references to his oneness with the Father. Through continuous spiritual unfoldment he demonstrated ever greater dominion over the evidences of mortality, vanquishing death first for others and then for himself, and finally putting off all remaining evidence of physical selfhood by ascending beyond the present apprehension of his disciples.

The disciples were enabled to follow in considerable degree his inspired example, but they did not really gauge the substance of his immortal selfhood as universally true of man. It was his sense of present immortality, unbounded by the finity of human experience, that enabled Jesus to walk earth triumphantly, not as a mortal, but always as "the Son of man which is in heaven" (John 3:13). Dwelling in the understanding of the one self-existent Mind, he overcame every obstacle and surmounted every false concept. His consciousness of Life divine crowned and completed his earthly mission.

"The Master's sublime triumph over all mortal mentality was immortality's goal," writes Mrs. Eddy (Unity of Good, p. 58); and she adds, "Thus the absolute unreality of sin, sickness, and death were revealed,—a revelation that beams on mortal sense as the midnight sun shines over the Polar Sea." To each one comes the imperative call today to triumph over all mortal mentality by replacing false concepts with the true idea, demonstrating the inalienable oneness of Mind and its idea. Divine Principle's immortal nature expressed in its ideal, man, evidences the presence of immortality which triumphs over every claim of evil, and brings to mankind the Life which is God, the Life which Christ Jesus proved to be the heritage of man.