Many years before she discovered Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy wrote these despairing words in the margin of a poem she had been reading. The poem ended with these words: "Oh! life, is all thy song/Endure, and die?" ^{Robert Peel, Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Discovery (Boston: The Christian Science Publishing Society, 1966), p. 66.}

Evidently that apprehension of the struggles and fragility of all material life touched her deeply. She was twenty-two years old that summer and engaged to be married. One of her biographers, Robert Peel, writes in his book Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Discovery, "It would probably be a mistake to suppose that the foreboding poems she wrote and copied at this time represented her constant or even usual mood. Much of her time was undoubtedly given to excited preparations for departure, to all the normal delights and passing worries of a bride-to-be." But he adds, "Yet the premonition of mortality remained." ^{Ibid., pp. 66-67.}

Haven't we all at times shared Mrs. Eddy's bleak premonitions about the promises of material life? Perhaps not so much while the family, the career, the promises of all the possibilities that the world offers, lie before us. But when things look dark and life seems empty we might feel the same way Mrs. Eddy did. "O God, is it all?"

No, it is not all. There is something else—something that is good, lovely, and permanent. Many years after she'd read that foreboding poem, Mrs. Eddy discovered the permanent reality of the good she was so longing to find. And she put on record her discovery in the textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.

Through her constant turning to the Bible, including Christ Jesus' teachings, over many years, she discovered what God is, what life really is. God revealed to her that He is divine Life, Spirit, the only substance. The permanency and reality of spiritual good that we're all seeking come from God. God, divine Life, provides and sustains man's true happiness and immortality. But our real life is not to be found in the material sense of existence, because materiality is the hypothetical opposite of God's creation.

When we begin to see the material sense of life crumble or fade away (as all illusions eventually do), this should only mean one thing to us—an opportunity to look higher, as Mrs. Eddy did. In looking through and beyond the illusions of materiality, she found the understanding of God as Life that gave Christ Jesus his freedom, spiritual joy, and eventual ascension above the belief of life in mortality. In spite of appearances to the contrary, man doesn't live in a material body, subject to eventual annihilation. Man lives in God, Spirit, as the immortal, supremely satisfied idea of ever-active Life. This truth of man is the truth of our real selfhood as God's expression. And we find this permanent good through the study of Christian Science.

But then the hard question may come, "Do you mean that's what I should do with all my time—just sit and study? But I can't. Even if I had all day, I'd get restless. I want to be doing something. And yet aimlessly pursuing material activities often leaves me feeling dissatisfied. I want the 'moreness' of spiritual reality, but I'm afraid I might have to let go of all the good I see in human experience."

This is where the compassion of the healing Christ comes in to help us. Jesus said, "The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into his hand." ^{John 3:35.} As man, God's idea, we each reflect all the good God has ever created. We're not being asked to give up good, but rather to uplift our view of it from materiality to spirituality. The Christ brings to us the coincidence of the divine reality with the human sense of life. It shows us how to find the good in our present experience that hints at the reality of spiritual good.

For instance, when personal joys seem to be taken from us, we still can gain through spiritual sense a higher view of the events of human experience. We can find in the intelligence, beauty, and courage around us hints of the permanent ideas of divine Mind, God. When enjoyed in moderation, good music, art, books, sports, travel, can be useful to us—not as just occupying time but as prompting us to look for glimpses of reality—to see through the illusion of materialism to the coincidence of the divine with the human.

There's evidence of this in Mrs. Eddy's life. Even when she was deeply involved in crucial questions regarding the future of the Christian Science movement, she found time in two successive years to visit the Concord State Fair. Mr. Peel writes, "She remained there half an hour, watched a race, applauding with the pleasure of a lifelong horse-lover the victory of a particularly handsome trotter, and observed a spectacular eighty-foot dive with the special interest that feats of daring and skill always held for her." ^{Peel, Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Authority (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1977), p. 183.}

We don't have to feel that Christian Science demands that we stop enjoying those good things of human existence. If we see them from the standpoint of spiritual sense, we find they teach us something about spiritually based qualities—qualities such as the courage Mrs. Eddy appreciated in the high diver's performance at the fair, qualities of harmony and beauty we find in an excellent musical performance, or qualities of inspiration and vision we recognize in a beautiful piece of fine art. These can all be aspects of our continuing enjoyment of life. But we must look deeper than the outward symbols of human events and search for the eternal realities they point toward in order to perceive continually the substance of Spirit within and all around us.

There's another aspect to the continual enjoyment of life, however, which should come to mean more to us. Here also, Mrs. Eddy's vitally alive thinking can serve as an example. At one time she received many invitations from her friends and students in Chicago to visit the forthcoming World's Fair. Her reply to those invitations can give us much to ponder. She writes, "I have no desire to see or to hear what is to be offered upon this approaching occasion." She continues, "I have a world of wisdom and Love to contemplate, that concerns me, and you, infinitely beyond all earthly expositions or exhibitions. In return for your kindness, I earnestly invite you to its contemplation with me, and to preparation to behold it." ^{Miscellaneous Writings, pp. 321-322.}

It's interesting to see that Mrs. Eddy wisely selected her priorities. To attend the Chicago fair would have necessitated about a week's absence from her work. The Concord fair could be accommodated during her daily drive. Perhaps she saw both her metaphysical study and human interests as useful for the abiding enjoyment of life, but the divine demand always had first place in her affections.

But she did enjoy normal human pleasures; for, when she invited some friends for luncheon, one of the guests relates Mrs. Eddy said, "How good God is to give me this pleasure!" And then the guest continued, "She explained that she so often had to see people for some specific reason, but that we were 'just company.'" ^{We Knew Mary Baker Eddy (Boston: The Christian Science Publishing Society, 1979), p. 98.}

Isn't this what we need—a constant love for and prayerful consideration of the metaphysics of Christian Science, together with an enjoyment of whatever is genuinely good in human experience? These two interests illustrate God's presence with us right where we are now in whatever is needed for both our spiritual growth and our enjoyment.

It's never necessary to accept the mortal suggestion that life is all over when circumstances change our style or manner of living. God, divine Love, infinite Mind, hasn't changed, and He is our real Life. But we need to gain the understanding of divine Life—seek it out in the discovery of our true undying, eternal identity as God's idea; seek it out in the genuine good we find all around us; and especially we need to seek it out with the grateful awareness "No, this material sense of life is not all there is." There's an infinity of spiritual good to discover in God's kingdom, and we can experience it forever.

BARBARA-JEAN STINSON