How true it is that whatever is learned through material sense must be lost because such so-called knowledge is 3Sense-dreamsreversed by the spiritual facts of being in Science. That which material sense calls intangible, is found to be substance. What to material 6sense seems substance, becomes nothingness, as the sense-dream vanishes and reality appears.

People say, “Man is dead;” but this death is the departure of a mortal’s mind, not of matter. ... The belief of that mortal that he 12must die occasioned his departure; yet you say that matter has caused his death.

Mortals try 18to believe without understanding Truth; yet God is Truth. Mortals claim that death is inevitable; but man’s eternal Principle is ever-present Life.

    Existence continues to be a belief of corporeal sense 6until the Science of being is reached. Error brings its Second deathown self-destruction both here and hereafter, for mortal mind creates its own physical con-9ditions. Death will occur on the next plane of existence as on this, until the spiritual understanding of Life is reached. Then, and not until then, will it be demon-12strated that “the second death hath no power.”

    The period required for this dream of material life, embracing its so-called pleasures and pains, to vanish 15A dream vanishingfrom consciousness, “knoweth no man . . . neither the Son, but the Father.” This period will be of longer or shorter duration according to the 18tenacity of error. Of what advantage, then, would it be to us, or to the departed, to prolong the material state and so prolong the illusion either of a soul inert or of a sinning, 21suffering sense, — a so-called mind fettered to matter.

    If the Principle, rule, and demonstration of man’s being are not in the least understood before what is termed death Death no advantageovertakes mortals, they will rise no higher spir-6itually in the scale of existence on account of that single experience, but will remain as material as be-fore the transition, still seeking happiness through a ma-9terial, 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, 12is 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 15hath no power.”

    If the change called death destroyed the belief in sin, sickness, and death, happiness would be won at the mo-18Future purificationment of dissolution, and be forever permanent; but this is not so. Perfection is gained only by perfection. They who are unrighteous shall be un-21righteous still, until in divine Science Christ, Truth, re-moves all ignorance and sin.

    The sin and error which possess us at the instant of 24death do not cease at that moment, but endure until the Sin is punisheddeath of these errors. To be wholly spiritual, man must be sinless, and he becomes thus only 27when 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 30his 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.

291:1    The suppositions that sin is pardoned while unfor-saken, that happiness can be genuine in the midst of 3sin, that the so-called death of the body frees from sin, and that God’s pardon is aught but the destruction of sin, — these are grave mistakes. We know that all will 6be changed “in the twinkling of an eye,” when the last trump shall sound; but this last call of wisdom cannot come till mortals have already yielded to each lesser call 9in the growth of Christian character. Mortals need not fancy that belief in the experience of death will awaken them to glorified being.

    “In the place where the tree falleth, there it shall be.” So we read in Ecclesiastes. This text has been 21transformed into the popular proverb, “As the tree falls, so it must lie.” As man falleth asleep, so shall he awake. As death findeth mortal man, so shall he be 24after death, until probation and growth shall effect the needed change. Mind never becomes dust. No resur-rection from the grave awaits Mind or Life, for the grave 27has no power over either.

    No final judgment awaits mortals, for the judgment-Day of judgmentday of wisdom comes hourly and continually, 30even the judgment by which mortal man is di-vested of all material error. As for spiritual error there is none.

    When you can waken yourself or others out of the belief that all must die, you can then exercise Jesus’ spiritual power to reproduce the presence of those who have thought 24they died, — but not otherwise.

    There is one possible moment, when those living on the earth and those called dead, can commune together, and 27Vision of the dyingthat is the moment previous to the transition, — the moment when the link between their op-posite beliefs is being sundered. In the vestibule through 30which we pass from one dream to another dream, or when we awake from earth’s sleep to the grand verities of Life, the departing may hear the glad welcome of those 76 76:1who have gone before. The ones departing may whisper this vision, name the face that smiles on them and the 3hand which beckons them, as one at Niagara, with eyes open only to that wonder, forgets all else and breathes aloud his rapture.

6    When being is understood, Life will be recognized as neither material nor finite, but as infinite, — as God, Real Life is Goduniversal good; and the belief that life, or 9mind, was ever in a finite form, or good in evil, will be destroyed. Then it will be understood that Spirit never entered matter and was therefore never 12raised from matter. When advanced to spiritual being and the understanding of God, man can no longer com-mune with matter; neither can he return to it, any more 15than a tree can return to its seed. Neither will man seem to be corporeal, but he will be an individual conscious-ness, characterized by the divine Spirit as idea, not matter.

18    Suffering, sinning, dying beliefs are unreal. When divine Science is universally understood, they will have no power over man, for man is immortal and lives by 21divine authority.

In the illusion of 9Illusion of deathdeath, mortals wake to the knowledge of two facts: (1) that they are not dead; (2) that they have but passed the portals of a new belief.

    All that we term sin, sickness, and death is a mortal belief.

    The fact that the Christ, or Truth, overcame and still 15overcomes death proves the “king of terrors” to be but Death but an illusiona mortal belief, or error, which Truth destroys with the spiritual evidences of Life; and this 18shows that what appears to the senses to be death is but a mortal illusion, for to the real man and the real universe there is no death-process.

21    The belief that matter has life results, by the universal law of mortal mind, in a belief in death. So man, tree, and flower are supposed to die; but the fact remains, 24that God’s universe is spiritual and immortal.