Resurrection is the proof of the unbroken continuity of life and love, the proof of the ever-presence of divine Love and the indestructibility of divine Life, of God and His forever manifestation.

It verifies the statement of Mary Baker Eddy in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 554), "There is no such thing as mortality, nor are there properly any mortal beings, because being is immortal, like Deity,—or, rather, being and Deity are inseparable." This is the significance of Christ Jesus' resurrection. The power of quenchless Love and endless Life is the truth he taught and demonstrated throughout his ministry. This truth the Bible reveals as demonstrable law, ever operative and ever present, the law which ever sustains the deathless continuity of life and annihilates death, as witness the raising of the little son of the Shunammite woman by Elisha the prophet centuries before the era of Christ Jesus, and the raising of Dorcas by Peter long after the Master had ceased to be incarnate to human view.

The Science of being challenges and disproves the testimony of the physical senses at every point, for Christian Science is the revelation that all is Mind, and that Mind is God, Life, Soul, Spirit. Hence life is explained from the standpoint of Mind as a spiritually mental experience, and Soul is seen as neither animating corporeality nor confined by it, but as reflecting itself in the spiritual sense and consciousness of Life everlasting and the radiance of birthless, fadeless, deathless being.

Physical sense, forced by its own limitations to concede the existence of a realm and power beyond itself, argues that there are two states of being, one material and the other spiritual, one temporal and the other eternal, and that man is born into matter and must die out of it to attain the spiritual and be immortal. Divine Science annuls this false testimony and proves by healing the sick and reforming the sinner that there is but one realm, that of Spirit, and but one state and stage of being, the spiritual.

In "Unity of Good," page 49, lines 16 to 19, and again in "No and Yes," page 35, lines 28 to 1, Mrs. Eddy graphically sets forth the oneness of being. Christian Scientists need to be alert to the subtlety of sense which argues for the present actuality of a materially mortal state of existence, even while it theoretically concedes that such a state is not real. This was not the basis of Christ Jesus' healing, for he said (Matt. 12:25), "Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand." Nor is Christian Science demonstrable from any premise which denies the present actuality of the allness of God, Spirit.

In an illuminating article entitled "The Saviour's Mission," beginning on page 59 of "Unity of Good," Mrs. Eddy points out that to mortal thought Jesus appeared as the child who grew to manhood and suffered on the cross, but this was the testimony of sense and not of Soul; also, that coming and going are not the reality of being, but belong alone to the mortal dream. She says (p. 62), "Mortal sense, confining itself to matter, is all that can be buried or resurrected." And she adds: "Mary had risen to discern faintly God's ever-presence, and that of His idea, man; but her mortal sense, reversing Science and spiritual understanding, interpreted this appearing as a risen Christ. The I am was neither buried nor resurrected." This coincides with Jesus' own statement (John 3:13), "No man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven."

Material reasoning becomes snarled in its own fallacies when it tries to explain the raising of the dead as the bringing back to a human, mortal plane of existence one who supposedly has passed beyond it. Resurrection is not a reinfusion of life into matter and a continuity of a so-called material existence. It is the proof that body (identity), life, man, have never been material, but are ever wholly spiritual and eternal, even the imperishable, deathless, limitless reflection of God. It proves that Soul is never confined in matter, is never released from a state of finity, never undergoes birth or death, and that individuality and conscious identity are safe in Soul. Resurrection is a kindling spiritualization of thought, the mighty quickening of spiritual sense whereby the sense of mortality is extinguished in the radiant revelation and tangible presence of Soul's allness.

The "I," or conscious individuality of all being, neither comes nor goes, but is forever one with the Father. The Ego never sprang into being with birth, never passes through a span of mortal existence with its record of human history, never succumbs to frailty or age, and is never extinguished or transformed through death. Conscious being is at the standpoint of perfection. It knows neither human growth nor decline; it experiences no incompleteness, no vacillation, no separation from Love and Love's ever-present, infinite expression. Of humanity's great Exemplar, who tested the depths of human woe, our Leader writes on page 36 of "No and Yes": "Jesus' true and conscious being never left heaven for earth. It abode forever above, even while mortals believed it was here."

That spiritual consciousness is ever present, ever available, ever active, that it is never deadened or dulled in the sleep or apathy or unconsciousness of corporeal sense, is evident through the revelation of Christian Science. This is illustrated in the fact that when thought habitually abides in the contemplation of spiritual being one often wakens in the night with a luminous realization of truth which blazes forth with the undimmed splendor and glowing actuality of reality, proving the continuity and unfluctuating, active ever-presence of spiritual consciousness. Such illumination is the realization of Truth—the power that heals. It is the reality of being extinguishing sense; it is immortal life, tangible, present, unquenchable, and unconfined.

Man abides forever in the conscious certainty and joy of everlasting Life. The seeming defiance of matter does not alter the spiritual fact. In all God's kingdom there exists no loss, no lack, no uncertainty of good. In the glory of resurrection the human belief of birth and death is extinguished, and individuality shines forth in the radiancy of immortality, the deathlessness of Soul.

L. Ivimy Gwalter