Page:The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany.djvu/301

Rh of Christian Science, it has no religious opinions or predilections to put before its readers. This manuscript is presented simply as an interesting and remarkable proof of Mrs. Eddy's ability in old age to vindicate in her own person the value of her teachings.

Certainly, Christian Scientists, enthusiastic in their belief, are fortunate in being able to point to a Leader far beyond the allotted years of man, emerging triumphantly from all attacks upon her, and guiding with remarkable skill, determination, and energy a very great organization that covers practically the civilized world.

King David, the Hebrew bard, sang, “I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.”

I for one accept his wise deduction, his ultimate or spiritual sense of thinking, feeling, and acting, and its reward. This sense of lightness acquired by experience and wisdom, should be early presented to youth and to manhood in order to forewarn and forearm humanity.

The ultimatum of life here and hereafter is utterly apart from a material or personal sense of pleasure, pain, joy, sorrow, life, and death. The truth of life, or life in truth, is a scientific knowledge that is portentous; and is won only by the spiritual understanding of Life as God, good, ever-present good, and therefore life eternal.

You will agree with me that the material body is mortal, but Soul is immortal; also that the five personal senses are perishable: they lapse and relapse, come and go, until at length they are consigned to dust. But say you, “Man awakes from the dream of death in possession of the five personal senses, does he not?” Yes, because death alone does not awaken man in God's image and likeness. The divine Science of Life alone gives