Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1906).djvu/306

290 eternal, self-existent. Life is the everlasting, the Being who was and is and shall be, whom nothing can erase.

If the Principle, rule, and demonstration of man's being are not in the least understood before what is termed death

overtakes mortals, they will rise no higher spiritually in the scale of existence on account of that single experience, but will remain as material as before the transition, still seeking happiness through a material, instead of through a spiritual sense of life, and from selfish and inferior motives. That Life or Mind is finite and physical or is manifested through brain and nerves, is false. Hence Truth comes to destroy this error and its effects, — sickness, sin, and death. To the spiritual class, relates the Scripture: “On such the second death hath no power.”

If the change called death destroyed the belief in sin, sickness, and death, happiness would be won at the

moment of dissolution, and be forever permanent; but this is not so. Perfection is gained only by perfection. They who are unrighteous shall be unrighteous still, until in divine Science Christ, Truth, removes all ignorance and sin.

The sin and error which possess us at the instant of death do not cease at that moment, but endure until the

death of these errors. To be wholly spiritual, man must be sinless, and he becomes thus only when he reaches perfection. The murderer, though slain in the act, does not thereby forsake sin. He is no more spiritual for believing that his body died and learning that his cruel mind died not. His thoughts are no purer until evil is disarmed by good. His body is as material as his mind, and vice versa.